


Heart of the Forge

by Gwyvian



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Technology, Angst, Erotica, F/M, Humor, Love/Hate
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2018-11-01 05:54:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10915677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwyvian/pseuds/Gwyvian
Summary: After Pathfinder Ryder and Jaal thwart the Roekaar plot to destroy the Forge, the disgraced leader of the Roekaar, Akksul, has gone into hiding to contemplate events. When word reaches both Ryder and Akksul that Moshae Sjefa's life is in danger, they are forced to abandon their plans and meet the mysterious informant who promises information that could save her life. Neither expects the other to answer the call or to have been contacted at all, but they expected even less to find a reborn Roekaar threat that is aimed not only aliens, but select angarans as well, the Moshae among them. Without allies to trust and with the new leader of the Roekaar controlling events, Ryder and Akksul must learn to put aside their differences and solve the problem - except that the rogue angaran faction turns out to be the least of their worries.





	1. Fanning Flames

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: This story contains spoilers for Jaal’s Loyalty Mission as well as The Journey to Meridian quest, i.e. Khi Tasira.

Ryder clutched her head in agony, the ringing in her ears intensifying and sending fire shooting down every nerve – but most puzzling of all with seeing a double vision of Akksul waver unsteadily before her. She was on Havarl, near to an angaran settlement, but just far out enough for a covert meeting with an informant to go unnoticed; at least, that had been the her intention. Worse, the giant leaves and glowing canopy of Havarl’s beautiful fauna was not enough to entirely filter out the drizzle of rain and at the moment every drop on her skin felt like acid.

“SAM… SAM?” she gasped, biting down hard on her lip to stop the moans.

White noise.

“What did you… do… to me?” she forced out, eyes swimming as she tried to focus on the angara standing around her. Their voices were strangely muted, as if she were listening to them underwater.

_Path—_ SAM’s voice came as if through a haze, but it cut off and was swallowed again by an ominous silence. Still, Ryder felt a burst of relief; SAM was still connected to her… but why couldn’t he speak? _Nothing_ could stop a quantum entanglement connection as far as she knew, unless there was some kind of RemTech that could do it. Thinking _hurt_ , profoundly; but she was cognizant that it was also the only thing keeping her conscious.

One of the angara abruptly seized her arm and thrust it over the console before her and she was convinced that she was going to finally pass out, left to the mercies of the Roekaar – if they could be said to have any – but remarkably the console didn’t vanish into the peaceful void of oblivion. Nothing else happened, either.

“Open it, human,” a woman’s voice said close to her ear. Slowly, articulately. It was still excruciating as the sounds vibrated through her enflamed mind.

“I… can’t… without SAM,” Ryder said through gritted teeth.

“Turn it off!” the woman commanded to someone behind her.

The pain suddenly ebbed considerably and sense slid back into place. Ryder blinked, shaking her head to clear her mind and with a shaky hand she wiped sweat mingled with rain out of her eyes as she blinked around. _The Moshae!_ The thought slammed into her as she registered angaran face after face; she had been summoned to this place, alone, to receive sensitive information about a plot to assassinate Moshae Sjefa. At least, that explained Akksul’s presence; but it did not explain anything else about the situation.

Why were the Roekaar holding Akksul, their former leader, captive as she was? There was no mistaking it, now that her vision wasn’t doubled and her brain wasn’t scrambled by the pain of losing SAM’s connection. The man was alternatingly snarling and trying to reason with the Roekaar that held him, obviously just as confused as she was as to why his own people would tread him so. More importantly: what could _possibly_ cut her off from SAM in the first place, yet still leave enough of the connection not to kill her? Ryder was sure that was the case.

_Pathfinder_ , SAM’s voice was blessedly clear and a painless presence in her mind once more. _Communication has been reestablished. I have alerted the Tempest, however it is unlikely they will reach here in time. I believe the Roekaar want to use our abilities to activate Remnant technology, but not to kill you until they have achieved their goal. Please do not resist. I will attempt to break through the dampening effect to aid you, but it will take some time. Please do not attempt to use any of the Remnant technology while our interface is weakened._

Ryder trembled from head to toe, muscles still spasming from the experience, but now the pain was more like a distant echo of what it had been. Her eyes travelled around as she made use of the moment they gave her while SAM fully regained control and she surreptitiously evaluated her surroundings as best she could, feigning that the process took longer than it actually had. She didn’t have to pretend much, though, she thought ruefully.

Her appraisal told her as much as she had expected from the moment it became clear that the message she had received all those hours ago from an unnamed informant had been a trap laid by the Roekaar. There were dozens of them, far too many to fight, especially with their ability to shut SAM down. It surprised her a little that they would come in such numbers this close to the settlement, where anyone could come along and spot them and force them to kill their own; it was one of the reasons why Ryder had agreed to come alone in the first place. She wouldn’t underestimate them like that again.

Or rather, perhaps she should reevaluate them, now that this woman, her captor, was in control of what remained of the organization; she couldn’t have had many more fighters than what she saw here, but it was enough and they clearly followed her with unquestioning zeal. Studying the faces of the guards restraining Akksul, she guessed that whatever influence Akksul had with them in the past, it had melted considerably in the face of their confrontation at the Forge, although their affection and belief in the man strangely seemed to be intact; it puzzled Ryder, but she put the question aside. There were far more pressing matters to attend to, such as escape and, of course, gaining as much information as she could.

“The Moshae,” Ryder said aloud; she addressed SAM, but the look she gave her captor made it seem as though she was asking her. After all, it would be something Ryder _would_ ask in that situation; the angaran scientist was the lure they used to get her here and from what she had heard, nothing convinced her that the Moshae wasn’t in real danger. _I should have let the others come with me,_ she thought, but it was not an angry thought. She had had good reason to come alone and just because it had turned out badly didn’t mean her logic hadn’t been sound.

“Is none of your concern any longer,” the woman finished her sentence with a sneer.

_I have already contacted the Resistance to increase security around Moshae Sjefa,_ SAM intoned. That was good to hear; she was still in grave danger of course, but at least there was a much higher chance that she could reach the Moshae in time.

Akksul glared at the woman, struggling futilely. “Zivrel, what have you done?” he demanded.

“Nothing yet,” Zivrel answered, turning to study him almost sadly.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, almost pleading.

Ryder stared at him. Was this the same man who had not so very long ago arrogantly demanded that she martyr him? Perhaps it was simply that she did not know the man beneath the cloud of hatred that had oozed from him constantly. Its quality had changed and she saw more pain in his eyes than before, though she certainly recognized that almost petulant glare of outrage he leveled at his former follower. He wasn’t _entirely_ a changed man.

“Because you were once a _great_ leader,” Zivrel said, lips twisting, though Ryder couldn’t tell if it was from scorn or regret. “It is my intention to make you one again.”

“By killing the Moshae?” Akksul demanded, snarling. “What does that accomplish?”

“By taking away the things that make you weak,” Zivrel snapped.

“I am not weak,” Akksul retorted, but his anger was indication enough that Zivrel had hit her mark. “The Moshae of all people doesn’t make me weak!”

“It is not just the Moshae, Akksul,” Zivrel shook her head. “We followed your every command, but you have sent us to protect individuals important to you despite all it has cost us, more than once you have shown too much concern when you should be more ruthless. Thaldyr was one such, the Moshae another. We were at our _best_ when you have been willing to step over foolish boundaries those who call themselves our leaders would have us follow, yet you have held back… if I can show you how little these people and these ideas mean, you will finally understand. You will finally, truly become one of us as you were meant to be.”

“Zivrel, if you resented watching over her for me, you should have shared it before now,” Akksul said more calmly and Ryder saw glimmers of the old Akksul she was more familiar with as he found his footing in the conversation. Not charming exactly, but compelling, trying to draw the woman in; though, Ryder suspected that Zivrel had known the former Roekaar leader too long to be fooled by that.

A muscle twitched in Zivrel’s jaw. “I should have been at your side at the Forge, I would have killed Jaal if you didn’t have the stomach for it!” Ryder blinked. Perhaps she underestimated how well Akksul knew his own people in return, provoking a strong response like that.

“I was wrong to try that,” Akksul said solemnly. His eyes slid to Ryder then for some reason and his expression hardened.

Was he angry that she hadn’t shot him? Well, Ryder supposed it made sense; if she had killed him, he wouldn’t be in this uncomfortable situation now of having his own followers apparently turn against him for not being harsh enough when, she was beginning to suspect, he had no desire to fight his own the way he had been forced to that time. It was his own fault, thinking he could fight his private war without killing angara in the process, but Ryder still felt an unexpected pang of sympathy for the man.

Akksul was irritating and deeply misguided, mired in hatred and he had certainly done unforgiveable things, yet he also realized and acknowledged that he went too far and that made her want to help him. It was an uncomfortable thought, but she supposed the Moshae had had a deep impact on her as well; Sjefa’s words about her former apprentice certainly haunted Ryder now as she studied him.

Zivrel shook her head again. “No, Akksul, you did not go far enough. Your plan was genius and yet it failed because you were weak.” Abruptly she grabbed Ryder’s hand again, shoving it over the console. “You’ve had enough time. Do it,” her eyes fixed on Ryder coldly.

_Establishing the connection,_ SAM’s voice said in her head and the panel came alive with shimmering light, dancing to the motions of her fingers.

Immediately a rumble spoke of massive doors opening and the soil began to tumble where a chasm yawned open at their feet. It was similar to the vaults she had visited, yet there was something different about it that suggested it was a different kind of Remnant structure. Despite herself, Ryder peered down, trying to get a look beyond the expected glowing pillars to see what was down there, though it seemed that like the vaults, it held its secrets too deeply underground to glimpse anything meaningful from ground level.

“Take him,” Zivrel commanded and the Roekaar holding Akksul dragged him to the lip of the chasm. “We will come back for you, I promise,” she smiled reassuringly, stepping up to him.

“Zivrel, please, not the Moshae,” Akksul tried again, his expression that of a man imploring a friend, perhaps someone even closer.

“Don’t let your curiosity get ahead of you, Akksul. There are dangers down there.” The two guards stepped away and without another word, Zivrel shoved him over the edge, stepping back to avoid his snatching fingers trying to grab hold of her.

Ryder frowned. Perhaps her chance would come soon, while they were distracted; if she could figure out which one of them was disabling SAM, she could attack that one first, taking away their greatest advantage…

Abruptly Ryder’s guards seized her in similar fashion to Akksul and dragged her to the same place where Akksul had gone over and where Zivrel still waited. She struggled, dragging her feet and trying to get out of their grip, but her body was still in shock from her brief severance from SAM and she might as well have been a kitten batting at a mastiff. Perhaps fighting her way out had never really been an option to begin with.

“What are you doing?” Ryder demanded, not caring if she sounded panicked. She _was_ panicked. “You still need me! How are you going to save him if…”

“Silence, human!” Zivrel barked at her coldly. “We can’t have you doing damage up here or escaping. You will keep him safe and you will know when to let him out. The field will be removed and you will make your AI do what you just did.”

Before Ryder could react or respond, Zivrel aimed a kick at her midriff, sending her flying backwards into air as it seemed. She flailed, twisting and gasping, but the familiar ripple across her skin told her that she was in a gravity well at least. She should have realized that, they clearly didn’t wish harm to Akksul and he had gone over first; but her instincts couldn’t help but react and send adrenaline pumping through her anyway. Though, it was definitely still true that landing on her back would be undignified and, considering Akksul, dangerous.

_Pain_. SAM was gone again, like an aching emptiness in a corner of her mind that sent shuddering flames through her body and she screamed despite herself. The fall was agonizingly slow, but the landing was even worse; the moment her body made contact with the cool floor she convulsed, not able to breathe. When her eyes opened, though, she forced every ounce of strength into herself to roll aside as huge containers came hurtling down after her.

“Damn it,” Ryder coughed, then groaned, aching from head to toe and heart racing from exhilaration. At least it seemed that she had begun to acclimatize to SAM’s absence; this time she didn’t feel quite so weak and her mind wasn’t nearly as foggy as before. _Well, the human brain is amazingly adaptable,_ she thought, getting to hands and knees that trembled and wanted to buckle. She wished it were a little _more_ adaptable; at least if the pain would stop, she would take it.

“ _You_?” Akksul exclaimed, emerging from the shadows, eyes flicking across the containers and up the gravity well. Clearly he had been studying the walls, trying to see if he could climb out. Snarling, he reached down and grabbed her, trying to drag her to the gravity well’s controls. “Send us back up!”

Ryder groaned in pain, hands futilely pushing at his, but her glare seemed to catch his attention better anyway. “Get your hands off me, Akksul! They severed my connection as soon as they threw me over!”

“You’re _useless_ ,” Akksul spat, shoving her back to the ground, closing the distance and trying to make the well work by himself.

Ryder just lay there for a moment, breath short, waiting for the spots to go away from her eyes. “Your girlfriend has some serious issues,” she muttered at him. “How did you ever manage to lead that group if you don’t even agree on the most basic things?” She was a little surprised the excruciating agony washing through her didn’t show in her voice, but she was grateful. She didn’t relish the idea of appearing weak before this man, it was bad enough that he could manhandle her like a ragdoll. _If I don’t want to appear weak, lying in a heap is not helping,_ she thought, already hating the concept of dragging herself upright; but, she gritted her teeth and rolled over.

Akksul grimaced. “She’s not my—” his eyes sharped and stabbed at her. “You’re trying to get to me! It won’t work, human.”

Ryder sighed, slowly clambering to her feet; she wavered unsteadily and didn’t dare take a step, but as the seconds passed she felt her body subtly begin to adjust. The pain didn’t subside, but she was certain now that SAM wasn’t wholly gone and she would be alright, with a little time. Eyeing Akksul, she wondered whether she would get that time; if he didn’t kill her, there were plenty of dangers in any Remnant structure just waiting to snare them. At least it looked as though Zivrel really did intend to keep them alive; the containers looked to be full of food and basic supplies needed to survive for a time.

“What possible, logical reason can you name why I would want to ‘get to you’? Unless you think that Zivrel or whatever her name is secretly plotted this out with me?” Ryder snorted derisively, giving the man a flat look. “Besides, _your_ Roekaar are finished. Whatever Zivrel says, those men were hers, not yours, so I’m not the one you should be angry at here.”

“Stop talking!” Akksul said forcefully, but before either of them could get another word out, the gravity well activated once more and weapons rained from the sky.

Their eyes met and Ryder saw in his gaze the same conviction, the same fury she had at the Forge, as well as the deep mistrust. Both of them moved simultaneously and snatched the weapons out of the air, aiming for one another the second their fingers touched each trigger and they gained control.

“Well,” Ryder said, trying to force her breath to stay steady, but she couldn’t stop the hand she was aiming with from trembling. “This is an interesting situation.”

“You won’t catch me off guard, human,” Akksul said coldly, smiling in satisfaction.

“You _need_ me, Akksul,” Ryder frowned. “I’m the only one who can get us out of here and save the Moshae from _your_ old friends. I, on the other hand, _don’t_ need you, so I would be careful where you aim that thing.”

Akksul’s smile faded into a grimace, but his narrowed eyes still held conviction. “You can barely hold your weapon steady, human. I would say you need _me_ more, if you want to live.”

Ryder blinked, eyes flicking to her gun, which was most definitely shaking. “Very well, we need each other. How about we stop this and agree not to kill each other until we escape?”

A long moment of silence stretched between them.

“If I must,” Akksul said finally, but he did not lower his weapon.

Ryder sighed. “Can we call a truce? I will cooperate with you if you do the same for me.” Akksul still didn’t lower his weapon and Ryder’s patience snapped. “‘To hate blindly is as dangerous to trust blindly,’ remember?” she quoted, glaring at him. “This is one of those moments, Akksul! Put it aside and damn you, _see_ that I am _not_ your enemy here!” Unable to hold her arm out any longer, she let her arm drop, holstering her weapon.

Akksul glanced away, lips twisting bitterly, but at long last he, too, put his weapon away. “A truce,” he nodded.

It was a start.


	2. Falling Stars

“I am _not_ your hostage,” Ryder glared up at Akksul, trying to hide the tremors that rippled through her. “You don’t get to just shout at me and expect a miracle!”

“I need a way out, _now_ ,” Akksul glared right back. “If you won’t help me I will do it alone!”

Ryder shook her head emphatically. “Splitting up will get us _both_ killed.” She tried to speak calmly, hoping to evoke the scientist in him to rationally think the situation through, but he was so _infuriating_ that she caught herself shouting right back at him more than once now. “We need a strategy, I don’t have the same advantages now that I had when I was using the vaults, but at least I have experience using RemTech.”

“Exploring is the _only_ way we will know if there is another way out,” Akksul replied, clearly exasperated. “And you call yourself an expert at this,” he scoffed. “How have your people even survived in Andromeda if you are this timid?”

She clenched her jaw. “It’s called ‘common sense’, something you of all people should know is essential when dealing with anything involving RemTech.”

“So you plan out every step you take?” Akksul sneered. “Had I known that beforehand I would have defeated you _long_ ago.”

“That just goes to show that you should actually bother to get to know the enemies you fight,” Ryder smiled humorlessly.

“You only won because you used the Resistance to get to us,” Akksul retorted.

“Are we _really_ going to nitpick how I defeated your insane plan?”

Akksul hesitated, but the burn in his eyes never faded even by a hair. “No, _I_ am going to do something about the situation while you waste time,” he said with a grimace. Clearly his defeat still smarted; but there was also a surprising amount of doubt in his eyes mixed with that fire and that intrigued Ryder. Still, his constant needling infuriated her too much for her to pay attention to anything else except how much she wanted to do something painful to him.

“We agreed on a truce, remember? That means we should _agree_ on how to proceed,” she gritted her teeth.

“A truce means that I don’t kill you where you stand, I do _not_ have to agree with you,” he scowled.

“But since we’re _both_ stuck here, we _should_ work together.”

“I don’t _need_ your help, human, I will do this alone if you don’t cooperate.”

“You don’t have dozens of Roekaar at your back to protect you down here! Or have you been playing at being the ‘savior of the angara’ too long to remember that RemTech is incredibly _dangerous_? We need to figure out this place before we go anywhere.”

“So your plan is to just wait around until they succeed in killing the Moshae?” he demanded.

“My connection to SAM is weak,” Ryder said flatly, “you need to be patient while he works out how to break through that dampening field, or whatever it is. The Moshae has all the protection the Initiative and the Resistance can muster, running headlong into Remnant bots and getting yourself killed is not going to help save anyone.”

“According to _you_ ,” Akksul scoffed. “You keep saying that as if _your_ protection mattered.”

Ryder shook her head. “Believe it or not, it’s the truth. Now, we need to sit down and think this through,” she added; she very much wanted to take a moment to evaluate the situation properly, if only Akksul could sit still long enough for her to make use of his supposed knowledge, but the suggestion definitely came in large part from an intense desire to curl up into a ball right there on the spot and just die.

Hours had passed since Zivrel had tossed them down the gravity well, but unfortunately her assessment of how well she adjusted to SAM’s absence was proving to be inaccurate; the pain hadn’t dulled even a little and though her nerves weren’t exactly on fire as the first time, it was close enough that it put her on edge. Moving carefully, she suited her words and approached one of the containers, sinking down onto it gratefully and trying to appear at ease while feeling not even close to it.

“What is wrong with you?” Akksul frowned at her, tilting his head speculatively. It wasn’t exactly concern in his voice, but Ryder had the feeling that he was a little fascinated despite himself. At least, this was the first time that his expression wasn’t disdainful, arrogant or hostile; perhaps for the first time she was catching a glimpse of the Moshae’s beloved student.

“It’s nothing,” Ryder answered, trying to smooth the suffering from her features, though nothing could smooth away the unbearably itching desire to do _anything_ to stop that pain. If SAM didn’t break through that barrier soon, she might just abandon dignity after a time and just thrash on the floor; but then again, if there was one thing that would keep her collected, it was the idea of Akksul watching such a display. He would _not_ be given the satisfaction even if it killed her.

Akksul sneered. “You speak of truces and logic, yet you lie to my face. This is why I do not trust your kind, human.”

Ryder closed her eyes for a moment. This was going to be a _very_ long wait. “SAM is intrinsically connected to my physiology. That dampening field is partially cutting him off and therefore I am in incredible pain. Happy?”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have revealed that to him; after all, it could be used against her, especially with the Roekaar in possession of that device, but she wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment. _I hope I don’t regret trusting you,_ she thought as she frowned at him, sure that he would start ranting about her weakness or humanity’s lack of elegant and efficient designs or some other nonsense. To her surprise however, Akksul began to study her rather than making the smart remark she expected. It didn’t last, of course, the moment he realized he had shown genuine interest in her unique connection to the AI he blinked at her, gave a noise of disgust and walked away from her, heading towards the inner chamber _again_. It had been the first thing he tried to do once their standoff ended, but this time she was afraid simple words wouldn’t stop him.

“Akksul!” Ryder called after him. “Damn you, I’m not saving you if a bot tries to kill you!”

As expected, he ignored her.

Stubbornly she waited there for minutes that took an eternity to pass, determined to be the better woman and remain calm, ready to discuss strategy when he came crawling back once he realized there was only one way out. She tried passing the time by peering around at the containers, wondering what they held, then she tried to work out what possible function this structure could serve, since it clearly wasn’t a vault based on the more uniform, spherical design, but every time a theory occurred to her she inevitably ran into the conclusion that she _did_ need to explore the place to have any real answers. The thought infuriated her, imagining the mocking smile Akksul would flash at her the moment she turned up on his heels, but no matter how she looked at it she kept realizing that staying there was foolish.

There was no helping it; for all she knew, Akksul might have already been picked off by a bot or some trap he was sure to forget to check for, but one thing was certain: she couldn’t sit still and hope for him to turn up alive. Not to mention that if he did find another way out by some miracle, she was certain he wouldn’t come back for her. Muttering imprecations under her breath, she slid off the container and braced herself for the wash of aching pain that inevitably came every time she moved a muscle and hobbled after him. He _was_ going to get himself killed and probably her along with him; she had no intention of letting that happen without at least putting up a fight.

_I recomm _—_ _ SAM’s grating voice suddenly spoke in her mind, a painful slice that sent her hands to her head.

Once the agony finally stopped, Ryder opened her eyes and blinked, trying to clear her vision and reorient herself. How she was supposed to do anything except suffer in this condition she didn’t know, only that she had to try even if it left her whimpering. When her breath came less forced and she felt a little more in control again, she started out on Akksul’s trail again, eyes roaming over everything. Clearly SAM had been trying to say something significant to her; if he had tried to recommend that she do or make note of something down here, that meant that his sensory input was still intact and that there was something worth paying attention to. That could be useful, provided that he worked out how to talk to her again without giving her a splitting headache; at the moment, however, he hadn’t said enough for her to understand.

“What did you want me to see, SAM?” she muttered, eyes travelling up the glowing pillars, watching their etchings pulse with a glow that made them seem alive. There was something rigidly symmetrical in the way they were organized here which she hadn’t seen in vaults before, but then, there was no telling if that had any significance whatsoever. She did notice, however, that the odd lights that kept popping up in the vaults seemed to be absent here, as if the place had been completely stripped of everything but the walls themselves.

Gunfire.

Ryder stared for a moment before breaking into a run as best she could, trying to accept the pain and ignore it. Twice she started down a corridor and she began to hear a subtle difference in the sound of gunfire that told her she was leaving it behind and she backtracked, gritting her teeth and promising herself things she would do to Akksul for forcing her to exert herself this much. The third time she turned around she skidded to a halt in the connecting chamber she had been trying to get out of since minutes, cautiously eyeing the silvery ferrofluid coursing around the sides gently gurgling like mystical rivers, but when faced with three identical passageways across from her she suddenly realized that she had no idea which one she had emerged from originally.

“I’m going to strangle that man,” Ryder said, picking one at random and hoping that this time it was the right one.

To her relief, it was indeed the right corridor, which she learned as a something sheared through the edge of her shields only to burn its way into a pillar behind her where the corridor bended and she rolled to the side. Tried to roll at least; she ended up an aching, tangled mess, but she made the most of it and approached the meager shelter the chamber’s archway offered, unholstering her weapon. Where _were_ those convenient hiding places? Her experiences so far suggested that every Remnant structure seemed to have military function in that way, with choke points, shields and blast panels, although she was ready to admit that they might have served an entirely different purpose originally. Still, their absence here bothered her.

Akksul was just ahead on the opposite side, also hiding behind the edge of the archway that let into the neighboring chamber, firing shots at what looked like a writhing multitude of bots that occasionally coiled in his direction. She couldn’t see much from where she was, but from what she did see the chamber was identical to the room she just left, except maybe the light coming from the pillars was slightly different. She groaned softly; navigating this particular structure would be even worse than finding her way in the vaults.

As she cautiously moved closer she couldn’t help but study the archway itself; it was unlike any Remnant architecture she had seen before, though she wasn’t sure exactly what it was about it that was so different. She didn’t have time to contemplate it as a snakelike bot with a myriad of oddly positioned legs suddenly broke off from the mass and rushed at her; she shot it, but to her surprise the pieces broke apart and the swarm kept on crawling towards her. Worse, those ‘legs’ abruptly twisted as if alive and began to pellet her with looked like needles; it seemed perplexingly harmless as a weapon, but to her astonishment her shields began to buckle almost instantly and she rolled away again, trying to get out of its line of fire.

“Shoot the head!” Akksul shouted at her.

“Where _is_ its head?” Ryder demanded irritably, dodging around painfully as the pieces of the snake bot tried to swarm her, heart racing from the effort and breath coming shorter each time she had to jump away or roll to the side. Why wasn’t any of it attacking Akksul?

Akksul scoffed. “The one with the eye, what did you think?”

Grimacing, she spotted one with an unusual round marking on it and shot, but missed, hand still too unsteady to aim at such a quick target properly. Dancing back to stay out of reach, eventually a bullet did find the eye and abruptly all the pieces clattered and rolled away lifelessly, the faint glow along its body fading. Gasping for air, she hobbled back to the side to avoid those needles and whatever else kept firing at them; it wasn’t a turret, but _something_ in that room was intent on keeping them out. Every millimeter of her screamed for her to sit down and rest for a spell, but she gritted her teeth and took cover opposite Akksul, trying to lay down suppressive fire to keep more of the bots from crawling out.

“I’ve never seen these before,” she said a little breathlessly, glancing at him. She did a double take as she saw another, much larger snake bot ghosting along the walls above, aiming straight for Akksul; without thinking her weapon rose to it and she unloaded as many bullets into it as she could, hoping that at least one hit its mark, but to her horror the bullets just glanced off its plating.

“What are you doing?” Akksul demanded, glaring at her, but he didn’t have time to react before the bot struck, coiling itself around him so fast it seemed as though one instant he was free, the next he was buried in darkly metallic coils that appeared far too supple compared to how resistant it was to bullets.

“Shit!” Ryder exclaimed, leaping from her cover to run to him, firing blindly into the room and ducking her head as best she could.

Akksul was gasping for air, struggling with all his strength but the bot kept coiling and tightening around him. There wasn’t a moment to lose; ignoring the risk to herself, she reached out a hand and tried to summon the same control that coursed through her when SAM manipulated RemTech, hoping enough of SAM’s connection was in her to pull it off. A fresh wave of agony washed through her and she felt something _strain_ …

With a keening noise and a crash that made the floor vibrate the bot fell lifelessly to the floor and Akksul scrambled out, stepping away gingerly but without delay. Ryder sank to her knees, consumed by the molten fire in her veins and the sizzling, brittle ice of her bones, trembling like a leaf. Her breath was labored and spots danced before her eyes; she couldn’t have moved if her life depended on it. She mustered energy enough to raise her head and looked into the chamber, expecting to see five more of those monstrous snake things going straight for her along with a dozen smaller ones with their needles, but all she saw was the roiling mass converging on that one central spot. She was in plain sight of all of them but to her dizzying relief they completely ignored her.

“Something got their attention,” Ryder said weakly, then cleared her throat, forcing herself to get off her hands and knees. She only managed to sit back on her heels, but at least it was more dignified; moving too much made her nauseous and the last thing she needed was to embarrass herself by emptying her stomach.

“They’re reassembling that one,” Akksul said, nodding at the bot Ryder had disabled. He looked vaguely uncomfortable, but clearly he wasn’t about to thank her. “If my assumption is correct that bot was connected to the smaller ones in some way, only a few came at me after a while… now I know why.”

“Then I suggest we get out of here before they succeed,” Ryder said, glaring at him. She risked her _life_ for the man and all he could do was coolly analyze the situation? “ _Now_ will you listen and not run around without a plan?” She wouldn’t say anything, but both of them knew she had the leverage of having saved his life and she didn’t hesitate to press her advantage.

“While you plan and coddle yourself the Moshae could be in danger,” Akksul snarled at her, “I will not sit around and let that happen!”

“Danger _you_ put her in,” Ryder pointed out. _I can’t do that again,_ she thought to herself, examining her handiwork before looking down at her shaking hands. Well, she hadn’t _really_ expected Akksul to honor the unspoken bond of saving him; considering that, next time she was determined to just let him die, even if the thought of being trapped down here alone made her shiver.

“There is a way out of here and I will find it,” Akksul continued as if she hadn’t spoken, eyes roaming over the bots, the walls and finally the bot that had almost crushed him. “Since you are no help,” he ignored Ryder’s splutter of indignation, “I have to rely on my own knowledge of the Remnant.”

“You really are a piece of work,” Ryder muttered, trying to summon the strength to stand. She managed it, feeling a little stronger now that the nausea had subsided and her nerves felt less like live wires.

Akksul scowled, turned on his heel and walked away without another word.

Ryder grimaced. “Damn you, Akksul,” she said, but his footsteps were already fading. Gritting her teeth, she glanced one last time over her shoulder to make sure nothing was following them and tried to catch up to the insufferable man, clutching her stomach and taking deep, steady breaths.

Just as she reached the outer chamber she glimpsed him striding confidently down another corridor, weapon only casually held ready. Careful to step wide of the ferrofluid, she started after him, wondering if he had any idea where he was going or if he was just as lost as she was. She paused a moment and counted nine archways in total. All of them looked identical as far as she could tell; she dearly wished for SAM and his navigation right then, but she was beginning to suspect that she shouldn’t expect his return any time soon. Not knowing what else to do, she fired a bullet by the entrance to the corridor she had just emerged from to mark the spot. Finally she caught up to Akksul where he was cautiously creeping along the side of the wall, the silvery glow from the ferrofluid conduits behind him dappling his features with a surprising softness.

“What kind of idiot strategy is this?” Ryder demanded in a low hiss, joining him in his creep forward. “You’re just going to provoke every bot down here until we have a horde out to kill us?”

“I’m finding a way out and you’re not stopping me, human,” Akksul retorted, but he also kept his voice low.

“You realize that most Remnant structures that are underground like this one have _one_ exit, right? That means your only way out of here is the gravity well!”

Akksul rounded on her. “Then why aren’t _you_ there trying to make your AI work?”

She met his granite-gray glare with one of her own. “Because you ran off and got yourself pinned down in a firefight!”

“I do not require your help,” he said irritably, but not as forcefully as before. Not even he could deny the fact that he likely would be dead by now without her; then again, knowing him he probably _could_ and _did_.

“Well remind me next time _not_ to save you from being crushed alive so I can save my strength,” Ryder snapped, moving past him.

“Now who is rushing ahead?” Akksul asked and Ryder closed her eyes for a moment, gritting her teeth. “You talk about strategy yet you waste whatever power remains to you on killing Remnant bots instead of activating the well,” he added and this time Ryder rounded on him.

“Yes! And I wouldn’t have _had_ to waste it if you had waited like I said you should!”

“And trust you?” Akksul narrowed his eyes. “If I hadn’t come here you would have wasted away there without lifting a finger! Like all your kind you wait for others to serve you and fix everything.”

“Who exactly do you think I’m waiting for?” Ryder asked angrily, confused.

“Your pet AI,” he replied.

“SAM is _not_ my pet!” Ryder glared.

A distant booming sound made them both cut off and look behind them. They exchanged a puzzled look, but both averted their eyes when they realized it. Ryder moved ahead and Akksul followed silently. She suspected that like her, he was wondering if they had inadvertently triggered something by killing that monstrous bot; either way, it suddenly seemed very sensible to keep pressing on.

It didn’t take them long to reach another archway that lead into yet another chamber, except this one was much larger than any of the ones they had seen before. Cautiously entering and looking around, she thought even her ship could fit into it lengthwise, though maybe the circumference of the chamber wasn’t quite large enough. All around there were pillars rigidly arranged equidistant to each other, glowing with a faint blueish light she had never seen on a Remnant pillar before. In the center of the room there was some sort of dais that reminded her of the entrances to the vaults, but something about this place made her uneasy in a way that no vault ever had.

“I don’t see a gravity well controller here,” Ryder said softly. Not that it mattered; if she wasn’t strong enough to operate the first one, she certainly couldn’t have used another, especially after what she had done to that bot.

“Clearly this works differently,” Akksul said, moving past her.

“Wait! You don’t know what it does,” Ryder grabbed his arm, but he slipped through her fingers easily.

Before Akksul could reply, a rumble deep underground made the floor vibrate beneath their feet and the dais began to split open, a loud whirring building in power as the doors grew farther apart. Before either of them could react, what looked like a shimmering swarm emerged from below, a milling mass of sparking light that danced with amazing precision, drawing geometrical patterns in the air.

“I don’t like this,” Ryder said uneasily; as the words left her lips the swarm expanded to fill the entire room and like a storm of comets, they fell.


	3. Thin Air

“It’s beautiful,” Ryder lifted a hand to catch one of the sparks like a snowflake and marveled at its pulsing glow.

Akksul stepped closer and bent to examine it also, eyes reflecting its light as if it was mesmerizing him; or he it, judging by the determined way his eyes studied it. Ryder caught herself studying him more than the spark, intrigued by how different he looked when he wasn’t glaring hate or derision; he was admiring and analyzing, much in the same way that she did when discovering something. Abruptly he seemed to realize the fact and he straightened, forcing a sneer onto his face as he leveled a disdainful stare at her. It _was_ forced, though.

“Aren’t you going to go on about how dangerous it could be?” he asked with a hint of mockery in his voice. She was sure _that_ was an honest reflection of his attitude, reckless as he was.

Ryder didn’t respond, however; she realized the spark in her palm was pulsing more energetically now and as she examined it more closely, she noticed that it was slowly growing in front of her eyes, building into what she assumed was a very small bot. Hastily she brushed it off, backing away uneasily and making sure none were still on her or in her hair. Akksul gave her a puzzled frown, but he also studied the sparks dancing in the air, looking for an indication of what had alarmed her.

As if in reaction, the sparks began to swirl intensely as if kicked up by a wind, sticking to the sides of the chamber and thereby cutting them off from the exit. She exchanged a concerned look with Akksul and this time neither one minded the fact; clearly whatever this was, it was reacting to their presence and considering the snake bots, it was likely these would be just as dangerous. Faster than she believed was possible abruptly a hum and striated ripples of energy seemed to join a group of the lights together into a net that dropped around her before she could even think to move out of the way.

“What…” she began, looking at Akksul again. Her shields buckled without warning and icy fingers seemed to grip her mind as if to rip it out, blurring her vision and blanking her thoughts – the world began to fade as the vibrating hum intensified.

“Skkut!” she heard Akksul’s voice, felt a hand suddenly grip her arm and she was falling heavily into someone’s arms, drifting on an icy tide of darkness that was parting beneath her to swallow her soul.

_Pathfinder,_ SAM’s voice was so faint and overlaid with static that even in a semiconscious state she despaired, but for once the pain was warming, it felt real.

Just before consciousness slipped away entirely, Ryder opened her eyes one last time and glimpsed lightning coruscating from Akksul’s fingers, disrupting the field, while he dragged her back as best he could with his other arm around her waist. Her head rolled to the side and the last thing she saw was the pain and anger on his face.

 

Ryder’s eyes opened and slowly, uncomprehendingly focused on a myriad of glowing veins climbing up the walls into darkness. Memories and voices that had filled her mind with their din faded into the background, leaving only a lingering sense of nostalgia that grew more intangible with each flicker of awareness that lit up in her mind. Struggling to sit up, she was surprised and pleased to discover that the agony was completely gone; her body felt weak and cold, but far more comfortable than she had felt in what seemed like an eternity. Her eyes focused on her surroundings and after a moment’s study, she realized she was back at the gravity well.

“Akksul?” she called out, looking around. After receiving no response, she stood and walked around the containers, reorienting herself as she did; she finally found him leaning against one of the smaller crates, facing the way that headed deeper into the building. Clearly he was guarding their makeshift ‘camp’ at the foot of the well, which was a painful reminder of their encounters with the bots down here so far; more concerning, however, was that Akksul’s breath was labored and when he scrambled to his feet at her approach, he moved gingerly.

“I wasn’t sure you would live,” he said, then seemed to realize his tone was a mix of concern and relief and he grimaced, glaring at her. “Instead you live another day to burden me,” he added, turning away from her firmly.

Ryder’s lips thinned. “If that’s how you feel, why didn’t you just leave me to die?”

“Because I’m not a monster,” Akksul said, his tone bordering on condescension. His eyes, however, studied her in a way that they hadn’t before, as though seeing her clearly for the first time.

“So now you feel compassion for me,” Ryder said skeptically, crossing her arms. Absently she wondered where SAM was; if he had reestablished their connection, as she suspected based on her physical condition, he should have said something by now.

“You’re just another alien to me, human,” he replied with a sneer, averting his eyes.

“An alien that saved your life,” she pointed out.

Akksul snorted. “Only because it serves your cause somehow.”

“Yes, my evil plan was to trap you down here so I could get you _almost_ killed only to heroically save you to win you over,” Ryder rolled her eyes. “I would _maybe_ give it an ounce of merit if your role with the Roekaar still mattered,” she added bitingly.

Predictably, her words angered him. “I _still_ matter,” he growled. “You wouldn’t even be alive if I didn’t! But I probably _should_ have let you die anyway.”

“Then you would also die,” she frowned, surprised at how taken aback she felt.

It wasn’t as if Akksul’s feelings about her living or dying really mattered; but Ryder couldn’t help but suddenly remember flashes of how he had leapt to save her without thinking. She had been delirious, maybe she had imagined the whole thing; but then, he definitely had laid her down behind the crates as far from the entrance as possible while he guarded it. The contradiction of his actions and his words frustrated her more than she would have cared to admit. It was silly, really; she knew what he was like, it should have come as no surprise that he had no regard for her as a living being and being angry over it wouldn’t change it, he had definite reasons for wanting to keep her alive that had nothing to do with concern for her well-being and that was that.

“Maybe that’s not too high a price to pay,” Akksul shot back and for a split second Ryder saw again in his eyes the same determination, the same willingness to die she had seen at the Forge; some part of him was still convinced that martyring himself was a good choice, perhaps even the only way to redeem what he had done. The idea filled her with a sudden panic; especially considering that if he had a death wish, there was only so much she could do to stop him, particularly while they were down here.

“What about the Moshae?” she asked. Surely the threat on her life would keep him alive, at least long enough to make sure she was safe. _Why do I even care?_ she wondered suddenly. Any harm that befell him would surely make the Roekaar stronger, even if he no longer lead them she was sure Zivrel would capitalize on it, but she was beginning to realize that a part of what made her anxious about the prospect was that she was becoming used to him; maybe SAM’s absence affected her much more deeply than she realized. _And where is SAM…_

Akksul was silent for a moment. “I won’t let anything happen to her,” he said firmly, then took a breath and with obvious reluctance he met her eyes again. “Do you have anything useful to suggest?”

Ryder tried hard not to smile in relief; she didn’t want to ruin her chances now that he finally seemed willing to listen to reason. “I think we should explore,” she said a little cautiously, “but first we should go over what we know.”

“You know _nothing_. You’ve barely just arrived in Andromeda, I studied Remnant ruins for years and not even I recognize those bots or the architecture – I said _useful_ , not examples of your ignorance.”

“There must be _some_ correlation,” Ryder frowned, carefully controlling her tone of voice. She would _not_ let him provoke her this time. “These _are_ Remnant ruins after all, I can’t believe that they just suddenly decided to change how they do things.”

Akksul gave her a flat stare. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There are _many_ variations of Remnant structures.”

“That may be so, but does it seem logical to you that we haven’t seen a _single_ similarity to ruins we’ve seen elsewhere? Where are the Observers or Assemblers, or any of the bots that turn up at practically every site?”

“The basic construct is still the same, pillars and ferrofluid conduits, even if the architectural design is different,” he said.

“That only indicates that the same base technology was used… what if these aren’t Remnant ruins at all?” Ryder mused.

Akksul scoffed. “Is that what passes for theorizing among your people? Wild guesses?”

“Give me a better explanation,” Ryder demanded, gritting her teeth. She was growing truly tired of his constant need to make supercilious remarks.

“This cannot be anything but a Remnant site,” he replied flatly. “The technology is the same, even if the bots do not match.”

“But these bots are a clear indication that, at the very least, this place was constructed by a different group of their kind.”

“Because you haven’t discovered these particular bots before?” he frowned, clearly dismissing her suggestion. “All that indicates is that you don’t know enough.”

“Because of what we learned about the Jardaan,” Ryder corrected, then hesitated. She wasn’t even sure if Akksul _knew_ anything about the Jardaan; she had shared all the information they had gathered at Khi Tasira with the Resistance and the Moshae, but beyond that she wasn’t sure whether the rest of the angara were aware of the facts, although she was fairly sure the Moshae wouldn’t have kept that information from her colleagues at least.

“Ah, yes, your discovery,” Akksul said sardonically.

“You don’t _believe_ me?” she asked incredulously. “Akksul, your own people have confirmed my findings there!”

“You mean the _Resistance_ has confirmed your findings,” he retorted.

“The Resistance _and_ your scientists.”

“And I should just trust that?” he asked, as if wondering how she could expect such a thing from him.

“What reason do you have _not_ to trust that?”

“I have a long list,” he frowned. “You left the galaxy where you belong to who knows what fate and you come here and expect everyone to be your friend because you were willing to take one of us with you? That’s not a basis for trusting your every word, for all I know you could have left your galaxy in smoldering ruins.”

“I suppose you’re going to say that you know better,” Ryder said irritably.

“I never pretended to like or trust your people,” Akksul said. “And why should I even try to?”

“Because I’ve proven you wrong,” she snapped. “All you’ve done is turn your own people against each other while everything I’ve done has served _both_ our people’s interests. You don’t get to take the moral high ground after that!”

“So you’re saying that blindly trusting you in my best interest? Don’t make me laugh,” he sneered.

“I could have let you die down here, but I didn’t,” she pointed out.

“Why didn’t you?” he demanded hotly. “Isn’t that what you really want, to finally take revenge for what I did to Jaal and kill me?”

“No,” Ryder replied, a little startled at the suggestion. “I don’t doubt or regret my choices, not then and not now. Why would you even think that?”

“I expected no better from you,” he replied dismissively. “You betray your arrogance with every word.”

“Are you angry because I saved you or because you saved me?” she asked, suddenly grasping something about his demeanor that had escaped her until now. He was far angrier whenever the subject of saving each other’s lives came up than was called for. The sudden expression of shock at the unexpected question was confirmation enough, though he immediately masked it with an approximation of contempt.

“Why would I be angry about that? Even if you are useless now, I may need that AI of yours,” he said, but Ryder wasn’t convinced.

“You _may_ need it?” she asked. “Have you suddenly developed an ability to use RemTech, then?”

“This place hardly qualifies as a regular Remnant site, there is nothing to say it works the same way,” he said sourly, but his tone was far less abrasive than before. His eyes appraised her then, clearly making note of how she held herself differently. “Something changed,” he said finally. “You are no longer in pain?”

“No,” she replied cautiously, sure he would somehow turn the observation into yet another accusation. Not wanting to give him the chance, she looked him up and down in turn. “But you clearly are… did that field or whatever it was hurt you?”

Akksul grimaced. “It was as though it started draining my life force, I think that is what was happening to you as well. You paled and your heart slowed so much I was sure you were going to die. My electromagnetic ability seemed to disrupt it somehow though, so I was able to get you out.”

Ryder blushed, flustered at the sudden mental image she had of him pressing an ear to her chest to listen to hear heartbeat; though she knew that there were more ways than one to check for a pulse, that was the one that came to mind, despite not even knowing if Akksul even knew where the human heart was in the first place. _Idiot_ , she chided herself, wondering what possessed her to even think of such a thing. Clearly the insufferable man was causing her brain fever, that or SAM’s absence did; or maybe it was both. SAM’s silence was increasingly making her uneasy.

She cleared her throat. “Why do you think it targeted me and not you?”

“Maybe it doesn’t like aliens,” Akksul said, completely seriously.

Ryder exhaled sharply, exasperated. “Then why did the giant snake thing go after _you_ and not me?”

“The small ones reacted far more hostile to you,” Akksul pointed out.

“The big one went for you,” Ryder repeated flatly.

“There is something they must be attracted to in us,” Akksul mused, then gave her a wary look. “What do we have in common?” he asked.

Ryder blinked. “Well, we are both mammals,” she said.

Akksul shook his head. “Those stars went for you and ignored me until I interfered.”

“Technology!” Ryder gasped, eyes widening as puzzle pieces seemed to snap together in her mind in a rush. “Wait,” a sudden apprehension gripped her as yet another clue fell into place. “SAM?” she asked. “SAM, are you there?”

Silence.

“I thought you couldn’t communicate with your AI,” Akksul frowned.

“This can’t be happening,” she said, horrified, feeling ready to jump out of her skin and she pressed fingertips to her temples as if by some miracle she could reassure herself that the implant was still whole… or even there in the first place. There was no way for her to tell that, however. “I think I lost SAM,” she exclaimed, beginning to pace up and down. “I _can’t_ lose SAM, I would die without the connection! Not to mention that we are trapped here forever if…”

“Perhaps it is temporary,” Akksul said.

“But it makes sense! Think about it: most of the damage we’ve received have been either to keep us out or to disable our technology. The first thing that went was our shields and then… maybe it was SAM’s presence, maybe that’s why it targeted me?”

Akksul frowned, studying her silently for a long moment. “If the Moshae dies because of you, human…”

“I gave her the _best_ protection I could,” Ryder said angrily. “I know you don’t trust that, but…” she cut off, eyes fixed on the wall behind him. “Akksul, look… those weren’t blue before, were they?” she nodded her head at the pillars.

He turned. “No,” he replied, looking suddenly troubled. He approached the pillars and examined them, running fingers over their surface.

Ryder took a few steps backwards to take in the whole chamber, turning around as her eyes travelled across as much of the pillars as she could see. Not all of it was blue, but even as she watched the green glow paled and turned into an icy blue. It was like watching the spread of an infection, or some kind of rewriting process; she was sure it wasn’t immediately dangerous to them, otherwise they surely would have realized it by now, but something was _definitely_ changing and she was very much afraid that they were the cause.

“We need to find out what’s happening,” she said. “Damn it, we _need_ SAM…”

“So we fix your AI,” Akksul said, for all the world as if it were the most obvious thing.

“You don’t understand,” Ryder said. “I have an implant that enables me to communicate with him, but he is also linked to me physically… I feel fine, I _shouldn’t_ feel fine if there’s even a chance… if that thing can disable technology, maybe it damaged it…”

“Our shields and weapons still work,” Akksul said.

“What if it’s because they’re a simpler technology? An AI is far from simple in that sense, neither is the method we use to communicate… I need to figure this out, maybe we can reverse the process! If we capture some of those sparks and study them…” she resisted the urge to keep calling for SAM. She was sure that SAM wouldn’t hold out on her, if he wasn’t speaking it meant that either he was incapable of communicating yet, or that their link had somehow been completely severed. _But how am I alive if that is the case? Why do I feel fine?_

“Prioritize, woman, we need to get out of here, nothing matters more than that!” Akksul said irritably.

“And I can’t do that without SAM, haven’t you been listening?” she demanded.

“You stopped that snake,” Akksul said, narrowing his eyes. “You didn’t have your AI then.”

Ryder hesitated, trembling from the stomach-churning mix of anger and anxiety. “I have a residual talent for using RemTech after using so much with SAM’s aid,” she admitted. “But with SAM completely gone…”

“If you use it again and it works, perhaps that may indicate whether your SAM is still part of you,” Akksul said patiently.

Ryder stared at him. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s go! Did you see any consoles down here? Any at all?” A voice in the back of her head said that she was grasping at straws, that even if SAM were completely gone she may be able to use the technology anyway, but she shoved it aside firmly. For all she knew, it could be the trigger SAM needed and she was willing to try anything if it meant getting the connection back.

Akksul wordlessly gestured at the gravity well.

“Right, I’ll try again,” she said, approaching it, but as she reached forward she hesitated. There was more than a little risk in trying to use RemTech without SAM, but more than that, she was very much afraid that nothing would happen.

“Well?” Akksul said impatiently.

Ryder held her hand out firmly and concentrated, focusing on that same feeling, as she had before, straining to feel the well and bring it alive. Her fingers began to tremble and her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears, but she persisted, grasping for that feeling of _connection_ when everything just clicked. After long seconds slipped by, she strained even more, feeling as though she was just at the cusp of breaking through, but she just kept sliding back. Her head was beginning to ache from the effort and just then she felt something stir in her fingers, a whisper…

Gasping, Ryder staggered back and let her hand drop. “I can’t,” she said, vision blurring from unshed tears. She felt wetness on her lip and when she wiped it with shaking fingers they came away red with blood. Her brain seemed to pulse with a washing pain, but worse was the despair closing in around her. _I can’t lose SAM…_

“That means we do things _my_ way, then,” Akksul said firmly. “We’re going deeper in.”

Ryder shook her head, trying to clear her mind and collect herself. She closed her eyes and took deep, regular breaths. “Akksul, you are hurt.”

“Not hurt badly enough to stop trying,” he said grimly.

She met his eyes and she realized that he was offering her something to focus on to distract her from the gravity of their situation. He knew as well as she did that it was increasingly likely they would die down here, but there _was_ still a sliver of a chance that they might find a different way. Considering him and his opinions on humans, her in particular, she doubted it was an intentional offer of comfort, but she felt grateful anyway; Akksul the Roekaar may be her mortal enemy, but Ryder decided that she was just fine with Akksul the determined scientist.

“We do it your way,” she sighed.

Akksul smiled in triumph and hoisted his weapon. “Keep up, Pathfinder.”


	4. The Beckoning Abyss

“This room is different,” Ryder said, peering cautiously past the edge of the archway, gun pointing into the room as she made a quick survey, but the only thing she saw was a broken pillar in the center of the room blocking a hole in the ground. It was one of a dozen they had visited since their last return to their camp hours ago, but this was the first time that they approached a room and nothing shot at them, nor did anything else happen.

“No bots this time,” Akksul agreed from the other side. With a glance at her as if to seek her agreement before deciding he didn’t need it, he entered the room and turned about.

When nothing attacked him, Akksul took a few more paces towards the pillar, lowering his gun. Ryder followed him, but before she took a full step the pillar abruptly came to life, sputtering and sending sparks in the air. A deep rumble made the floor vibrate and it sent loose rubble tumbling into the hole the pillar was blocking, but other than that, it didn’t seem to do anything. Ryder bit her tongue to keep from telling Akksul to be careful; she didn’t want him thinking her skittish or concerned for him, but something about the pillar made her uneasy, especially because it seemed to react to Akksul’s proximity. After all, there had been _far_ too many things down here reacting to them in unpleasant ways.

“Well, well,” Akksul mused, reaching out to the pillar and just as his fingertips touched it, a swirl of symbols appeared above it, flickering faintly, but enough to make them out. “This is no ordinary pillar.”

“Is that…?” Ryder stepped up beside him, tilting her head towards him to try to make out the symbols. Not that she could understand any of it without SAM; the thought was like a fist clenching around her heart and with a deep breath to steady her nerves she tried to put the AI out of her mind. She glanced at Akksul, but forgot what she was going to say when she realized he had been studying _her_ curiously as she studied the pillar. Maybe wondering what her conclusions were? She couldn’t decide.

Akksul immediately fastened his eyes on the symbols, tracing them in the air. “I’ve seen this inscription before…” After a long moment, he shook his head. “It is too fragmented to make anything out, the damage in the pillar must be extensive.”

“Look at the placement, though,” Ryder said, running her fingers on the pillar’s surface. “It’s the only pillar we’ve seen since we encountered the sparks that hasn’t turned blue _and_ it’s blocking something,” she crouched down and tried to peer into the darkness. “It’s almost like it was deliberately pushed here to keep something from coming out.”

“Something must have gone wrong in this place,” Akksul said. “This smells of a crude patch to fix a larger problem.”

“Those bots we’ve encountered so far… they were very wild in a way I haven’t seen in other Remnant bots,” Ryder continued, standing and facing him. “This whole node we’ve been exploring is a little different than the rest of the place, as if it was added on as an afterthought, but it’s _this_ place that looks much more like what I would expect a Remnant site to be like.”

Ryder swept her eyes around the room again, spotting several ledges and haphazardly positioned pillars that seemed almost strange compared to the room just a corridor away. They had ventured deep into the structure and a map was beginning to draw up in Ryder’s mind that reminded her of a neural net; dozens of corridors connected ‘nodes’ which lead off into several rooms like this one, yet most interesting of all was the rigid symmetry in it all. If she went from a central node to one on the left that had four adjoining rooms, she would most certainly find an identical node to the right with an equal number of rooms. Each room and node had equidistant pillars that ringed it, ferrofluid coursing along its edges and the only thing that set the rooms apart from the nodes were their size and the daises that yawned open when they approached, disgorging copious amounts of smaller or larger bots. Twice they had been in a room that had the sparks, too, which sent them running; luckily those never gave chase.

“I recognize the configuration of the structure,” Akksul said. “The Moshae took us to study a place like that… but that place was completely dead, not even the pillars worked.”

Ryder frowned. “That’s unusual… even the most abandoned and broken Remnant sites I’ve seen so far have had _some_ life in them, if nothing more than the glowing pillars. Was that ruin you saw spaced out like this?”

Akksul nodded. “It was partially flooded, we couldn’t map the whole thing, but like this place it had nothing in them except these… doors in the floor. Most were sealed shut and we couldn’t pry them open.”

“I’ve seen some massive machinery, pyramids as far as the eye can see, but everything about that place was angular… everything here seems so much more organic in design,” her eyes returned to the broken pillar. “Except everything in this node, of course. Why are they even connected?”

The room they stood in and the two others they had seen so far connected to the same node were as expansive as the ones in the rest of the structure, but that was where similarities ended. The moment they stepped into the node the difference was palpable; they had found gaps in the floor where Ryder assumed those odd lights would normally pop out, except that they weren’t functioning, the pillars were either missing or were spaced unevenly, some were taller or shorter, and they even found a lifeless datacore leaning drunkenly at the edge of a precipice where clearly something had smashed through the floor and gaped into a void below, propped up by another broken pillar. Across from that was yet another corridor, but Akksul and Ryder had wordlessly agreed on starting with the easy access corridors first, before facing that dangerous jump.

“Look,” Akksul said suddenly, leaning down to study the floor.

Bending, Ryder watched for a few seconds before she realized what she was seeing. “Is the green light _fighting_ the blue light? What does it mean?”

“Perhaps that was the original intention,” he frowned.

“You mean the pillar wasn’t put there to fill a hole, but the hole opened to break the pillar?”

Akksul nodded.

Ryder went back to studying the pillar and its immediate area, trying to rearrange what she saw in light of such a different objective. What he said did make more sense than to think that the ill-fitting, slanted lean of the thing was deliberate and expected to be effective; the gaps around it seemed too large to _really_ prevent something from coming out and there was definitely rubble around the edge of the hole that supported Akksul’s theory. Inspecting the pillar more closely and walking around it to find a deep crack in the back of it, she thought it a marvel that the thing worked at all.

“I wish they had gone to the trouble of scribbling down an explanation for everything,” Ryder muttered.

“They did,” Akksul replied. “We just don’t understand it.”

“Well, we’ve scanned it and added it to our database of gibberish, maybe…” she trailed off, not wanting to mention SAM again. She wasn’t prepared for Akksul to see how deeply frightened she was for having lost the AI, perhaps permanently. Coming back around and looking at him, she realized with dismay that he sensed her fear anyway, judging by the speculative frown he wore.

“We studied the Remnant for decades without the help of an AI and we managed to piece together enough,” he said. “It will take longer, but you do not _need_ it.”

Ryder stared at him incredulously. “I… suppose you are right,” she managed to say, and Akksul nodded as if that closed the subject. Perhaps the comment was motivated by his self-interest, but she _never_ thought to hear Akksul of all people say anything even remotely comforting or nice to her; unless she was misunderstanding his tone completely. As he continued to study the flickering symbols, Ryder studied him surreptitiously, trying to catch a hint of what went on in his mind.

“We’ve learned all we can here. Come on, let’s make that jump,” Akksul said, waving a peremptory hand at her as if he expected her to follow along obediently before striding out of the room, obviously confident that she would follow; but then, she didn’t _really_ have any reason to object, so she did follow, rolling her eyes at his back.

Back at the node, Ryder shot a bullet into the corner as she had done at every room to mark that they had been there, though she thought at least where this node was concerned, there was no need. Taking a deep breath, she approached the precipice and tried to position herself at the point where the two ledges were the closest, but she couldn’t help but peer down. It was pitch black and there was no way to tell what was down there and she started to feel like the blackness was trying to suck her down, so she raised her eyes and forced herself to keep them there.

“Ready?” she glanced at Akksul.

He gave her a half-smile that wasn’t _quite_ derisive. “Would you prefer I go first?”

In answer, Ryder backed up a few paces and ran to the edge, jumping and firing her jetpack at the last possible moment. In the air she reflexively glanced down again and glimpsed a flash of something, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and a split second later she was rolling to her feet on the other side. Proud of how perfectly that had gone, she turned to give Akksul a pointed look, but he was already in the air after her; his eyes also flicked down for an instant, but she wasn’t sure he saw anything, and as he, too, rolled to his feet he came up right beside her.

“Did you see it?” she asked in a carefully controlled voice.

He was standing _very_ close, towering over her, but didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact; he merely studied her face curiously for a moment, though whether it was deliberate or simply taking advantage of the situation, she couldn’t tell. For the first time since meeting him she truly registered just how tall he was, as well as the permanent, grim tightness in his angular jaw. She would have said that was the stress of their current situation, except she had seen it when they had met before, though she hadn’t really thought about it as being significant until now. In her mind she went back to the moment he had tried to reason with Zivrel; that had been the first time she had seen him since he and Jaal had faced off at the Forge and even then she was certain that a deep pain that had hardened around him was cracking, but also she was certain that he was trying to control it in a very un-angaran way.

“A flash,” Akksul said finally, frowning, then stepped past her down the corridor. “Come on, we don’t have time to waste.”

“We’ve got nothing _but_ time,” Ryder said dryly under her breath, but she didn’t feel particularly interested in arguing the point; she was more than a little preoccupied with the moment that had just passed between them.

It was a little ridiculous, but since being trapped and forced into an uneasy alliance with the former Roekaar leader, Ryder had been discovering sides of him she had never even suspected the man had; worse, she found those aspects of him fascinating… she found _him_ fascinating, which was something she knew she would come to regret. After all, she knew who he was and what his views were; it was an inescapable conclusion that her curiosity was very likely to get her burned, badly, yet she couldn’t help but dwell on it anyway. It was a professional curiosity on the most part, of course; abrasive and arrogant he may be, Akksul was definitely proving himself to also be both intelligent and insightful. Though, she had to admit that part of what made him so compelling was the complexity and determination in his ashen eyes, especially up close.

“A console!” Akksul exclaimed, taking the last few steps to the archway at a quicker pace, barely bothering to make sure the coast was clear before striding in.

Ryder bit back a curse, hoping he wasn’t going to repeat the reckless stunts he had pulled in the beginning, but as she entered behind him with weapon ready, she couldn’t help but be as distracted by what they found as he was. Rubble crunched under her feet and looking around revealed an absolute mess of stones and pieces of pillars; the room was almost completely dark, only the silvery glow of the ferrofluid and a single light by the console providing any real illumination. She walked around slowly, noticing in the back of the room behind where the dais should have been there were large cracks in the floor, as if colossal forces had clashed here and both sides had failed to gain the upper hand. The remains of the pillars around the sides reached upwards like jagged teeth to a darkness that was almost tangible it was so oppressive, but what drew her to a halt was a familiar piece of RemTech machinery.

“Akksul… I think we can make an Observer,” Ryder said wonderingly, stepping closer to examine the apparatus. It appeared undamaged, though it clearly had no power. “Does the console work?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.

“I am not sure I can make the interface work,” he said, mouth twisting. Clearly he had already tried and failed.

Ryder hesitated. “I can try,” she said reluctantly, joining him. He wordlessly stepped aside to give her access, though by his expression he was sore about not being able to do it himself; or perhaps because he regretted displaying a lack in front of her. It wouldn’t have been the first time; Ryder suspected that he still very much saw her as an enemy, despite the tone of scientific understanding they had found.

Focusing, Ryder extended her hand over the console and concentrated. She tried to do the same thing she had done at the gravity well, but this time she felt a distinct lack that she hadn’t before; she suspected that she was sensing SAM, or rather, his absence. Determinedly she poured all her effort into bringing the console to life and to her shock, a flickering tower of symbols began to materialize above it. She had no notion of what had gone right this time, but it had definite consequences; her head was beginning to pulse with pain and her hand trembled with fire that was shooting up her arm from her fingertips, but she persisted. She tried to direct the energy to create a friendly Observer, but it felt like bending her mind around something much too large to comprehend.

“Remarkable!” Akksul breathed, eyes rapidly taking in the symbols, reaching out as if to touch them. “Yes, this is the same pattern… I’ve never seen it preserved in such detail, we only ever found fragments, but I’m sure this is the same inscription. If I could compare this to what we found before, when…” his words trailed off. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.”

Ryder pulled her hand back and sucked in deep breaths to slow her racing pulse. Dizzying black spots swam in her eyes and her body felt drained, but at least the burning sensation had subsided to a mere tingle, though the headache persisted. When she straightened, to her surprise she saw that the console remained active, though the symbols had faded away. At first she thought Akksul was waiting for her to continue, but she realized he was preoccupied with something else that clearly troubled him.

“Did you see enough?” she asked, still a little short of breath.

“Yes,” he answered, frowning at her as though trying to figure her out, but brought to the subject, his face changed to reflect a sense of wonder as he pondered what he had seen. “I have definitely seen that pattern of symbols, but not in this order. We have no language to compare any of it to, but if I can remember every place I’ve seen it, perhaps everything that was _around_ it, I could extrapolate…”

Ryder suppressed a smile. “Does any of that help us now?” she interjected gently.

“Not immediately, no,” Akksul said, eyes returning to where the symbols had been. “But considering what we have seen down here, I would say it has to do with keeping things under control.”

“What makes you say that?” Ryder frowned, but it dawned on her. “Wait. If _this_ part of the building was damaged, that would explain why the other rooms just keep spewing bots… did you see any regular Remnant structures around the dead one you found?”

“One,” Akksul said. “It was the chamber above it, the only thing that was functional down there was the gravity well.”

“So, maybe the Jardaan were experimenting with something down here, this node would have been the brain of the place, the control center…” she walked around, but she stumbled a little, still weak from using the console. To her surprise Akksul made a move as if to catch her, but he held back, instead crossing his arms. Perhaps she had mistaken the move; she continued. “There _has_ to be something here that could stop the bots, maybe it could clear a path for us, let us go even deeper.”

“You aren’t strong enough for that,” Akksul said.

“But maybe _you_ are,” Ryder said. “I activated it, but I’ve seen you interface. It might not be nearly as strong as what SAM and I have done, but it might be enough.” Akksul grimaced in response, probably offended at her comparison to his detriment, as he must have seen it, but he nodded all the same and stretched his hand over the console.

Abruptly the apparatus came to life and an Observer materialized before their eyes; Akksul looked as stunned as she was, but they had little time to worry over what had gone wrong. The Observer began to quiver and toss about in the air, laser firing in seemingly aimless directions, leaving swathes of destruction in its wake. Ryder’s eyes went to the apparatus and she realized with horror that it was pulsing with a blue that seemed to crystallize over the entire machine, not just the lights; worse, it was creating _more_ Observers.

“It’s infected! Shut it down!” Ryder called, ducking as the laser burned a streak right over her head. She shot at the bot, but it kept jerking from side to side, quivering before its laser fired again. She clipped one finally and it spiraled into a keening heap of smoking circuitry, but by now there were several more, all behaving as erratically as the first.

“I’m trying!” Akksul retorted, hand outstretched.

Ryder rolled to the other side of him, aimed and brought down another one, but just then the third sent a wave of destruction straight at Akksul. “Look out!” she cried, but it was too late.

With a painful cry, Akksul went down, clutching his leg. Blood poured from the wound, though thankfully it had only hit it on the side; Ryder shuddered as she imagined how much worse it could have been. She dodged over to him and grabbed an arm, trying to help him to his feet so they could get out of the room and abandon their attempt at stopping the process, shooting over her shoulder at the bots whenever she could, but just then another laser hit the cracked section of the flooring and with a loud rumble the floor began to cave.

“Come on!” Ryder yelled, but Akksul shoved her away angrily, scrambling to his feet and hobbling out on his own. Ryder wasted no time and ran after him, quickly overtaking him and making the leap across the chasm at the end of the corridor before turning to wait for him.

“Go on!” Akksul growled at her as he reached the ledge mere moments after she jumped, almost losing his balance as the floor began to vibrate even harder.

“Jump!” Ryder called to him, gesturing him forward.

With a grimace, Akksul jumped, awkwardly because of his injured leg – and Ryder knew instantly he would miss the edge. With a curse of alarm Ryder shoved the datacore into the abyss, went flat on her stomach and gripping hard on the fragment of a pillar the datacore had been leaning against she caught his arm just before he plunged to his death. Groaning with effort as his weight jerked her downward, Ryder put all of her strength behind just holding on and somehow she managed to do it long enough for him to scramble over the lip of the chasm and go sprawling next to her. To Ryder’s immense relief, the tremors began to abate and nothing seemed to be following them; good thing, too, because at that moment she was sure she couldn’t move to save her life.

“How bad is it?” Ryder asked after a long moment, rolling to her side and wincing with pain. She thought she just might have dislocated her shoulder from catching him.

“Leave it be,” Akksul snarled as she sat up and tried to move closer to examine the wound.

“Don’t be an idiot, you need my help,” Ryder glared at him.

“I don’t need anyone’s help!” he retorted, but the agony was plain on his face. So was something else, but Ryder couldn’t quite point to what it was.

“Akksul, we need to get out of here! I’m not going to hurt you, just let me help,” she made a move towards him again and stopped short when he pointed his weapon at her.

“Keep your distance, human,” he said, gritting his teeth and clutching at his leg with his other hand. Blue blood trickled between his fingers and slowly began to pool beneath him.

“This again?” Ryder asked angrily, ignoring the weapon and locking eyes with him. “I thought we were past that nonsense!”

“I’m not letting _any_ alien touch me, especially not now,” he said, but his hand trembled slightly.

“Why _do_ you hate all aliens so much?” Ryder demanded. She knew the answer, but she was tired of constantly having to fight with him in the most ridiculous situations.

“Because the kett took who I was and broke it, I am what _aliens_ made me,” he snarled, then abruptly realized he may have said too much. With a growl of frustration hurled his weapon down and gave himself over to the pain, clutching his leg with both hands.

“Akksul,” Ryder said gently. “I’m _not_ kett. Besides which, you and I had an agreement, are you telling me you’re not honoring it?”

Akksul sneered for a moment. “You’re not baiting me into cooperating with you,” he said, glaring at her.

“Damn you, this whole place could come down on us at any moment!”

As if responding to her words, tremors spread through the building again, making bits of rubble jump and topple down into the chasm, but this time it wasn’t a collapse, Ryder was sure; it was as if something had brought the whole place truly alive for the first time and even as they watched, the light in the pillars intensified, that same blue spreading like frost enveloping the pillars and walls and then they all went dark in a wave that rippled from the connecting corridor to the previous node all the way to the opposite end where the chasm was; abruptly, the tremors stopped, leaving behind dead silence.

“Are you willing to cooperate _now_?” Ryder asked, staring blindly where she remembered Akksul being. She fumbled at the light fixed to her armor and turned it on; its automatic function had gone when SAM had, but thankfully it still worked.

Akksul winced in the sudden light, eyes glowing softly, but he nodded sourly and let her apply medigel on the wound. It would at least stop the bleeding long enough to get him back, or so she hoped. Once finished, she clambered to her feet and wordlessly extended a hand to him, which he accepted to with reluctance and before he could protest, she swung his arm around her shoulder and dragged him out of the room as quickly as she could. Being that near a precipice when the whole place kept shaking on and off as if it was about to come apart unsettled her, and for once, Akksul did not try to hinder her. Once they reached the next node, however, she slowed, trying to make out the two bullet holes she had left at the archway which would lead them back to the first chamber.

“That one,” Akksul nodded at a corridor to their right.

“Are you sure?” Ryder asked dubiously. They all looked the same to her.

“I wouldn’t say ‘that one’ if I wasn’t sure,” he replied in a tight voice. Ryder wasn’t sure if his tone was from the pain or because of her doubt, but either way she decided to just let it drop. The man would stop being irritating a day _after_ he was dead, she was convinced; although, she found to her surprise that at the moment she felt oddly satisfied more than anything else. If only he was this compliant other times.

“What do you make of those Observers?” Ryder asked after a moment.

“The blue stuff seems natural in other chambers,” Akksul said immediately.

“But it was clearly attacking – infecting – the regular Remnant bots,” Ryder finished, nodding. “I think this place was built by an enemy of the Remnant… or the Jardaan specifically.”

“One who had the same technology… but also one who probably didn’t win against these Jardaan.”

Ryder smiled. “You believe me about them now?”

“Hardly,” Akksul said, but then he hesitated. “Still, it would be careless of me to dismiss it outright.”

“Good enough for me,” Ryder said.

After what took an agonizingly long time, the pair finally reached the gravity well again and Ryder heaved a sigh of relief. Akksul pulled away from her immediately and she let him go, but hovered nearby as he hobbled towards the containers in the center of the room. She thought maybe there was something wrong when abruptly he froze, gripping one of the containers with a bloodstained hand to steady himself, his eyes filled with a sudden anguish.

“No,” he said softly.

Ryder closed the distance between them and followed his gaze anxiously and gasped. “The gravity well! It’s…” she exclaimed.

The console was completely dark, just like the rest of the building.

“We’re trapped,” Akksul snarled.


	5. Substratum Surge

“It’s not working,” Ryder gasped, sinking to her knees before the gravity well’s controls. “I’m not even sensing an echo this time,” she added. The effort of trying to use the tech was still taxing, but it appeared that at least without power her body didn’t react so violently; at that moment though, she would have welcomed any amount of agony if it meant getting out.

_Trapped._ Every time Ryder looked around and saw the encroaching darkness she was reminded of the fact; it seemed to reflect that void in her mind where SAM was supposed to be. Enough time had passed that the reality of that lifeless black was sinking in; her sense of time was utterly skewed, but fatigue had finally overtaken them and they had taken turns sleeping, so Ryder estimated that at least a day had passed since the structure shut down completely. She itched to talk, to fill the silence with the sound of her voice, but she was afraid that it would only emphasize what was missing. Even with Akksul there she felt alone – maybe especially with him there, considering who he was – but she wasn’t willing to give in to the feeling. _I’ll stop trying to get out when I die,_ she thought fiercely, but at the same time she couldn’t suppress the despair she felt quite as effectively as when the lights were still on.

“Try again,” Akksul commanded, huddled next to the heat lamp Zivrel had provided, tinkering with something. He had been at it for hours now, barking the same command left and right whenever Ryder took a break or seemed to be more than ten paces from the gravity well.

Eyeing the man reproachfully, Ryder crossed her legs and hugged herself, deliberately _not_ trying again. Beyond an initial burst of anger and demands that she start this fruitless endeavor of trying till she keeled over in exhaustion, the former Roekaar leader had been remarkably quiet, fingers deftly taking that thing apart or rearranging its components. To all appearances Akksul was completely immersed in his activity, but during quite a few of her numerous attempts at the well she had heard gaps of silence behind her when she was sure his eyes were on her. Whether that was to watch her ‘progress’ or to watch her for some other reason, she had no idea, but it certainly made her dwell on him a little too much.

Especially when she paused to _really_ look at him; while he was absorbed as he was now, she couldn’t help but wonder at how different he looked. It wasn’t really a physical change, the angles of his tattooed face were the same as ever, though the tightness in his jaw seemed to have loosened, but rather his gray-blue eyes seemed somehow deeper, haunted by some memory, and that changed him. She wanted very much to ask him about what had happened to him; she saw only benefit in helping Akksul of all people put aside his animosity towards all aliens. For one thing, she suspected he was the only hope of stopping Zivrel and the reborn Roekaar movement without a lot of bloodshed, and for another, she couldn’t help but feel compassion for what she knew of his story; as intriguing as the challenge was, though, Ryder also suspected that she was the _last_ person he would let in like that. All the same, she wanted to do it, now more than ever, seeing that expression on his face.

“What are you doing?” she asked curiously, leaning backwards to get a glimpse of the device he held.

“Why do you keep asking?” Akksul demanded, giving her a flat look.

Ryder let out a breath of frustration. It seemed that every time she opened her mouth he reflexively turned into the Roekaar again; she had to fight to steer him towards his more sensible side. Still, she had glimpsed what lay hidden beneath that bitter contempt and it intrigued her much more than she was ready to admit. Turning her back on him again wordlessly, she was reminded of an uncomfortably pleasant fleeting dream she had had about the man during the night. It hadn’t been anything serious, but they had discovered something and they had shared a moment of joy at the discovery; Ryder rather thought that it was the loneliness talking out of her, especially feeling as vulnerable as she did without SAM, but there _was_ that side of him… She hadn’t dreamed those times when he had forgotten about hating her and her species.

“Do you intend to wait until we starve?” Akksul asked pointedly.

Ryder gritted her teeth, stood and tried again. They had at least a month’s worth of rations, maybe even more if they restricted themselves a little, but she had no desire to argue about it. Almost instantly her fingers began to cramp, and her head began to ache the harder she tried to get that sluggish flow of energy moving again, but she kept focusing anyway. She had a vague sense of the machinery she was trying to operate that became sharper every time she tried, that alone made it worth the effort, but she was also growing increasingly impatient with the futility of her attempts. No matter how clearly she sensed the tech, it didn’t give her the _power_ to wield it. Finally, the strain was growing to be too much and she let go, dropping her hand and walking away on unsteady legs. She approached one of the containers across from Akksul and sank down onto it, placing her head between trembling hands.

“Try again!” Akksul snapped angrily. “The Moshae’s life depends on me getting out of here, I won’t be trapped because of your idleness!”

“It’s _not working_ , Akksul, you’re going to have to accept that fact,” she said, punctuating her words with a glare as dropped her hands.

Akksul snorted. “The only guarantee that we won’t escape is if you _stop trying_. But maybe I should have expected you to give up when you’re not handed the solution.”

“Why don’t _you_ take a turn if that’s all it takes?” Ryder demanded. “The Moshae once told me you were her most promising student – well, prove it!”

“I _have_ tried,” Akksul replied irritably. “My abilities far surpass anyone else’s, but they’re not without boundaries.” His eyes narrowed. “Unlike you, I didn’t take shortcuts to learn what I know, it would take me twice as long to do it.”

“In other words – _your_ words – you’re useless,” Ryder said bitingly.

“Prove me wrong that _you’re_ not,” he replied with hot eyes, but his tone was surprisingly subdued compared to the angry outburst Ryder was expecting. Ryder wasn’t about to believe she had actually managed to hurt his feelings, but all the same, she regretted her hasty words.

She sighed tiredly. “If I just had SAM, I’m sure we could…”

“You don’t have your AI. Get used to it,” Akksul cut in harshly.

“I _can’t_ get used to it,” she said, trying not to reveal the anguish his comment sparked. She couldn’t just let go of hope and admit that SAM was gone for good, facing that would be admitting to the fact that they were going to die down here and she was _not_ ready to do that. Her tongue didn’t seem to agree, however. “How could I get used to it? You understand that the only reason Zivrel used me was _because_ of SAM? How do you expect me to _get used to it_ when…” she bit her lip hard to stop herself from going on.

Well, maybe she _was_ already feeling pretty hopeless, but Akksul had no need to know just how hopeless and empty she was beginning to feel. She trembled with the effort, though; a part of her understood that unleashing her anxiety was exactly what she needed at that moment, but she couldn’t believe Akksul the right person to do it with. Except that she had no one else, maybe never _would_ have anyone else. She met his eyes for a moment, uncertainly allowing herself to at least communicate her feelings with her eyes; to her surprise, he seemed to reflect her feelings for a brief instant before the contempt returned.

“Does complaining about it help anything?”

“I never claimed it did,” Ryder gritted her teeth. “Nor was I complaining!”

Akksul set down what he had been working on, shifting his weight to face her fully. “Is that the only thing that you are good for? Being a host to an AI?”

“No, of course not,” Ryder answered, perturbed by the question. She was very attached to SAM, but SAM certainly didn’t _define_ her, not even as a Pathfinder; the AI’s enhancements and insight were invaluable, but at every turn all the decisions were ultimately hers, she chose their path and she forged a way forward for her people and to help the angara.

“You’re reliant on it.”

Ryder bit back the denial that came to her lips and she considered. “SAM is important to what I do,” she said finally. “Regardless, in this situation I’m not exaggerating when I say that I simply don’t have the capacity to exert this much power. Besides, the attempt would probably kill me,” she muttered. Akksul blinked at that, clearly startled that she was making the effort despite that fact.

“You humans are puzzling,” Akksul shook his head. “You keep expecting me to change my feelings about aliens, yet all you seem to do is use others, your AI is no different. What could your people gain from sacrificing yourself to save the Moshae?”

“Again, you mean?” Ryder asked frostily. “Do you honestly think I would _kill_ myself to gain something for the Initiative?”

“Clearly,” Akksul replied. “So what do I have to offer you to make that well work?” he asked grimly.

Ryder stared at him, suddenly understanding. “You’re… admitting you can’t do it,” she said, astonished.

Akksul flinched slightly, but he didn’t deny it. Instead he said, “What will it take, human?”

“Why can’t you trust your experience with me?” Ryder asked.

“My _experience_?” Akksul asked, glowering. “My experience is that your people have either muscled their way everywhere or manipulated their way into every angaran world, nothing I’ve learned about your people has suggested that are capable of doing any better than the kett in the long run, so my _experience_ is that your kind needs something better than mere survival or kindness to motivate them.”

“Your experience with _me_ , Akksul, _not_ ‘my people’ or whatever other arbitrary category you want to shove all of us into,” Ryder retorted, clenching fists in her lap.

“You _are_ one of those people, whether or not you want to admit it,” Akksul said.

“Who exactly are you posing for down here? Do you have Roekaar stuffed up your sleeve you’re trying to impress?”

Akksul smiled humorlessly. “Am I categorizing? Or are _you_ unable to distinguish _me_ from my movement because I speak truths you do not want to hear?”

“Like any of that _matters_ down here!” Ryder shouted. “It’s just you and me, Akksul, until we _die_.”

“I will _not_ die here,” he leaned forward, glaring, but abruptly the glare faded from his eyes and his eyes left hers. They didn’t leave _her_ , but he seemed to be at least partly focusing inward, judging by his grimace. “I will not let you die, either.” He locked gazes with her again.

Ryder blinked at him. “Why not?” she asked, despite herself.

“Because that is what I offer in exchange for your trying harder,” he said.

Try _harder_? “While you do what exactly?” she demanded, jumping to her feet. “All you’ve been doing is sit around there snapping at _me_ to keep running my head against a wall with that thing,” she jerked her head at the well, crossing her arms.

“I’ve been trying to modify a power cell,” he frowned.

Ryder hesitated. “To kick-start it? It’s a long shot,” she snorted, then added judiciously, “it might work. But I’ve had even more experience with using dormant RemTech than you, don’t you think putting my mind to use with that is more productive than trying to do something we _know_ doesn’t work?”

“As if you knew enough about our technology,” Akksul sneered, but it appeared a little forced to Ryder. “This is far more advanced than anything your Initiative has.”

“You still believe that after what you’ve seen me do?” Ryder demanded. She wasn’t sure he actually did any longer, but as exasperating as he was, he would never admit to the fact aloud.

“Do I have a reason to believe otherwise?” Akksul also stood, either feeling at a disadvantage sitting beneath her or trying to loom over her himself. Unfortunately it was effective, if not in the way he intended probably. Again she noticed just how tall he was, then grew irritated with herself. This was _not_ the time to be noticing things like that.

“Akksul, you have _seen_ what I can do even without SAM,” she said, then stopped abruptly, blinking at him. Was he…? No, it was impossible. Now that she thought their conversation through, though, no matter how she looked at it, it was as if he had designed it to goad her. Perhaps he really _was_ trying to motivate her by provoking her; she wasn’t sure if that made everything he had said better or worse. How could she trust what he said, or know when he was being honest or just prodding at her? Glaring up into those startlingly deep eyes she thought the man was perplexing, utterly irritating and still somehow fascinating despite everything.

“I saw you kill a bot with remarkably little effort, what is stopping you now?”

“No _power_ ,” she said flatly.

“Well, then, let’s _find_ power,” Akksul said.

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said so far,” Ryder replied coolly, but out of the corner of her eye she studied him as he set about preparing himself, donning the few pieces of armor he had taken off while he worked, trying to puzzle out if the man had somehow manipulated her into this course of action. Come to think of it, she _had_ instantly gone along with his first instinct to keep trying to make the well work; she didn’t think she would have rejected the idea of going back into the nodes, but Akksul clearly had assumed she would and forced her to come to the conclusion that they needed to find power. _Or am I imagining all of this and he really is like that?_ she wondered, not quite sure what ‘that’ was, but knowing at least that it was intriguing, in a completely maddening way.

As soon as he was done, Ryder snatched up her weapon from where she had laid it while she tried to make the well’s controls work and moved towards the entrance deeper into the building. Akksul slowed them a little with his limp, but he seemed to have regained quite a bit of strength sitting in front of the lamp for so long, Ryder noted with relief. He had slept in front of it, too, while she chose to sleep on the opposite side of a two crates; she had also spent a long time peering at him through the gap between those crates, wishing for some reassurance that she knew she wouldn’t get from the former Roekaar leader, but at least the warmth of the light had its own soothing effect that eventually helped her get to sleep, even muted as it was in her patch of shade.

“It’s so quiet,” she said, shivering as they entered the corridor, turning their lights on.

Akksul glanced at her, but there wasn’t really anything to say to that, so they moved forward in silence. It only took them a short time to reach the first node, which was so dark that Ryder was sure the darkness was actually trying to smother their lights, but there was something else about that place that bothered her. She turned around slowly, tensing as if for an attack, but finding no enemies to shoot. Tentatively they approached the corridor that lead to the room with the snake bots, ghosting along as silently as they could, though the light would surely give them away before their footsteps would. Still, the mood of the place demanded it somehow. As they reached the room, all they found was silence, and again something made Ryder’s shoulder blades itch with a sense of wrongness. As before, she turned around slowly, shivering slightly at the gaping hole in the ground, void of snakes or anything else, but with a palpable sense of emptiness that only clung to something that was meant to be emptied.

Abruptly she realized what was bothering her. “Akksul, look,” she stepped closer to the side of the room.

Akksul followed her gaze and paled. “No liquid,” he breathed, and for the first time since they had been trapped he looked afraid.

“No wonder nothing works!” Ryder exclaimed, dismayed. “There’s no ferrofluid in the conduits… this place didn’t just go dormant it’s _completely_ shut down.”

“I can’t accept that,” Akksul shook his head violently. “We need to go deeper. To the rooms we haven’t seen before.”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” Ryder said fervently. If there was even the slimmest chance that there was something deeper in they hadn’t seen before, she needed to know as much as he did. The alternative was too terrible to contemplate; no SAM, no power and not even Zivrel and her Roekaar had any way to extract them, though she almost wished Zivrel would never return even if it meant their deaths. If she ever did, that would mean the Moshae’s assassination had succeeded and that was one piece of news neither Akksul nor she would be able to digest.

They made slow progress, Ryder searching for bullet holes she had marked doorways with to get their bearings while ignoring Akksul’s grumbles that his sense of direction was perfectly fine. Since first arriving they had only explored a handful of nodes, but this was the first time they ventured through the archway that was in a straight line from the gravity well room. It lead them to another node with a handful of doors, which was expected, but instead of exploring each room clockwise as they had done before, they paused at each archway, discussing the likelihood that a control center of some sort would be beyond; Ryder maintained that they should keep going straight, it made sense that all the important rooms were connected along the same axis, while Akksul argued that he had never seen such logic applied to any Remnant structure. Finally, Ryder won the argument by simply striding down the center corridor and only slowing once she was sure Akksul would follow so he could catch up.

“Do you hear something?” Ryder asked a few minutes later, pausing to listen.

“Fluid, like running water,” Akksul said with barely masked excitement, placing a palm against the wall to rest his injured leg for a moment; it must have really pained him to openly display his unsteadiness in front of her. He grimaced when he glanced at her, knowing now that Ryder had been right about the direction; he didn’t say anything aloud, but there was much less hostility in his eyes now compared to when they had argued about it.

“Maybe deeper in there is still an active room,” Ryder said enthusiastically. “That _must_ be a control center, it’s the only thing that makes sense, that would be the last place to lose power!”

“We should have come this way a lot sooner,” Akksul said, not quite glaring accusation at her, but at her flat look – this direction _had_ been her idea, after all – he looked away with a slightly abashed expression. Well, he wasn’t a complete fool, but still Ryder was surprised he would even admit to it that much. He pushed away from the wall and followed.

“Can you walk?” Ryder asked, eyeing him as he continued to favor his left leg.

“I’m not as fragile as you think, human,” he grumbled.

“I didn’t say you were,” Ryder said. “That doesn’t mean you don’t occasionally need help.”

Akksul snorted. “From you?”

“No, we’ll just wait here for as long as it takes Zivrel to figure out how to get at the Moshae, she’ll come back and you can call up and ask for a Roekaar to keep you company instead of me,” Ryder said irritably, then took a deep, calming breath. Snapping at him wouldn’t help change his mind about her variety of alien, but the man could have provoked a _stone_.

For a wonder, Akksul echoed her sigh, looking away. “I doubt any who follow her have the intellect to help me. I know those faces, their main skills involved brute force, the first to disband were the scientists.”

Ryder closed her mouth with a snap when she realized she was gaping at him. “That… sounded remarkably like a compliment,” she said a little faintly, footsteps slowing to a halt. Was he toying with her?

Akksul also paused and grimaced, but when he met her eyes he gave her a reluctant nod.

Ryder blushed, feeling utterly off balance. She cleared her throat. “Let’s move on,” she said, brushing aside hair from her face reflexively, as if she could smooth away the embarrassment.

The man definitely could twist Ryder’s mind into knots; the only thing she couldn’t decide was if it was intentional or not. Briefly she thought about giving him a return compliment, but when she looked at him she discarded the idea immediately. He kept surprising her, but the one consistent trait he had was turning sour on her whenever she seemed to lower her guard and speak in more friendly terms. They moved forward in painful silence, which Ryder increasingly felt as uncomfortable while Akksul seemed to be in as much ease as he could be, considering the pain of his injury and the oppressive quality of the air, but before long Ryder’s least concern was the awkwardness between them; the sounds of rushing liquid were building in power as they began descending.

They kept to the pattern of going through whichever door was straight across, but several times now the corridors between the nodes sloped downward. Clearly they were going to the depths of the Remnant structure in a more literal sense than they had initially thought they would, but still every corridor lead into yet another node identical to the last, with their rigid, dead pillars and a handful of doors, where the number of doors seemed to be the only variation to the theme. When they finally reached something truly different however, Ryder wished she had never listened to Akksul, wished that she was blissfully ignorant of anything beyond what had been obvious on the surface of their situation, trapped and maybe even forgotten in the dark.

Water. The corridor across from them was filled with rushing water slowly gurgling upwards, by millimeters to be sure, but inexorably swallowing the node they had entered. Before either one of them could voice their despair or horror, a fountain of water gushed from somewhere between the black pillars, drenching both of them in ice. Gasping for air and struggling to rush out again, the pair slipped and slid their way up the slope to the previous node. Immediately Ryder swiveled around and stared panting at the archway that lead down, afraid to see more water already rising to swallow yet another circuit of the building into its cold depths, but thankfully the moment never came; the flooding really was a slow process, but there was no mistaking it: it was deliberate.

Behind her Akksul paced up and down, leaving a trail of wet footprints. Ryder opened her mouth to say something, but looking at his face she held her council. Whatever he had thought before, the former Roekaar leader was clearly struggling with the realization that unless a miracle happened, they were definitely going to die, much sooner than their supply of rations was good for. Abruptly he went through one of the archways to the side and Ryder followed with a grimace, but she needed to see, too. Every room was the same: a gaping hole where likely hundreds, if not thousands, of bots had been unleashed.

“We need to get back,” Ryder said finally, breaking the silence.

“Get back to _what_?” Akksul demanded, glaring at her.

“I don’t know, but it’s better than waiting to drown!” Ryder snapped. She turned and left him there, though she was relieved to hear his footsteps behind hers; now more than ever she couldn’t face being completely alone. Once they finally reached the gravity well again some time later, Akksul rounded on Ryder.

“How could you let this happen?” he growled.

“ _Me?_ It was _you_ who couldn’t sit still!” she glared right back at him.

Akksul snarled. “All you could do was speak empty promises that your AI would fix things! Your AI would figure out a way past Zivrel’s device – and now in a few days only our corpses will float up to the surface.”

“I had to save your life using what power remained to me,” Ryder glared, taking off her outer armor and standing closer to the lamp just as her teeth began to chatter. “Then you had to go running off, _again_ , where you triggered those sparks that took SAM away completely, well congratulations Akksul, _you_ brought this on us!”

Akksul strode up to her, ignoring his own doused clothes. “Without me to save _you_ , that room would have killed you,” he said angrily, but there was a surprising amount of raw anguish behind that anger. “None of that matters now, if your people had any notion of doing things right, this would never have been possible in the first place! The Moshae’s blood is the price of your ineptitude as a race. Now leave me be to my thoughts.”

“So you fail to save her and it’s _my_ people’s fault?” she stared at him, stepping to block him when he tried to go past her.

“What use is that thing if someone like Zivrel can snap your connection like a thread?”

“I’ve never met a man more arrogant and self-centered than you, I mean, how can you _live_ with yourself?” Ryder demanded, irritated the way his granite eyes and dusky blue face suddenly stirred her appreciation even while just the sight of it provoked her ire beyond reason.

“Nor have I met anyone so utterly oblivious,” Akksul snarled. “You have an AI in your head and controlling your body,” his eyes appraised her, as if wondering where the technology showed. His eyes locked with hers again, full of fire. “You could be so much more than you are and you waste it! But then, I expected nothing better from your kind. Now get out of my way!”

“You think I’m wasting my potential? You want a taste of my AI and see how just how I use it?” she scowled, stepping closer to him. She wanted so much to slap him senseless with the full force of SAM’s enhancements behind it to send him sprawling, but she restrained herself. The connection wasn’t there anymore, but even if it had been to the degree that it was when Zivrel trapped them, it hadn’t been nearly strong enough for her to dare risk snapping it by drawing on it too much for such a frivolous reason; still, the look on his face was worth it. “What would _you_ do differently, since you’ve apparently got it all worked out?”

“I would have gotten us out of here by now!” Akksul retorted, looming over her threateningly, but there was a split second of hesitation before he spoke. It wasn’t fear, she was sure, the man was too reckless for that; the way his eyes lingered – was her closeness making him uncomfortable?

“And why didn’t _you_ get us out of here if it’s that easy?” Ryder asked pointedly, stepping even closer. If it put him off balance, so much the better; she was _not_ letting this argument end with yet another smug recitation of how she validated his resentment of aliens. “You’re supposedly an expert! What use is _your_ knowledge if all you can do is moan about _my_ shortcomings?”

“Just stop talking!” Akksul growled. “What do I have to do for you to leave me alone, woman?”

Ryder let out a humorless laugh. “You’re not going anywhere without me and you’re certainly _not_ dodging the question!”

“Are you trying to provoke me?” Akksul asked, leaning closer, fingers flexing at his sides.

“Maybe I am!” she replied, tilting her chin up defiantly. If he could do it to her, why couldn’t she do the same to him? Maybe then he would actually _do_ something instead of just expecting her to pull a miracle out of thin air.

Akksul snarled but a change seemed to come over him as he studied her face and without warning, he kissed her, hands seizing her arms almost painfully to pull her near. Her fingernails dug into his arms as she gripped him back, but she didn’t pull away; in fact, after a moment she let go and snaked arms around his neck to keep _him_ from pulling away, but he didn’t seem to have any such intention, lips only leaving hers to bite her neck, fingers tangling into her hair.

“I thought you hated me,” she said and when he pulled back, their eyes locked. His gaze was clear and intense, filled with a stark desire that only abated for a brief moment of curious self-reflection.

“Maybe I don’t,” he said, bending to kiss her again, unexpectedly toppling them over onto his cot.


	6. Dappled in Shadow

Ryder breathed in deeply, feeling the comfortable weight of Akksul’s arms shift slightly on her, speculatively studying the warm glow of the heat lamp bathing the coolly glowing tiles as if to battle the inexorable bleakness that was coming from below. She had been watching that mesh of light and shadow since waking long minutes ago, finding comfort in being aware of her surroundings for the moment; she would have taken much more comfort in the unexpected closeness that had developed between her and Akksul, she wanted to, but he still slumbered and she was much too uncertain about what his feelings would be when he woke. It was easier to rest in his arms and just imagine that all was well for the moment, so long as she didn’t think about it too hard.

Still, there was only so much she could do to ignore him, pressed to her as he was, and watching the light-dappled chamber didn’t chase away the awareness that the life had drained from this place; blushingly she finally turned her head to stare into Akksul’s face. Anxiety warred with fascination as she imagined the possible scenarios: maybe he would blame her for seducing him, even if he had been the one to steal the first kiss, or perhaps he would declare it a mistake… or maybe he would accept it, and she would spend her final days despairing for what _might_ have been; but then, she was convinced that there was no circumstance other than facing certain death alone and trapped that could have instigated intimacy between the former Roekaar leader and an alien such as herself in the first place. It was meant to be this way.

_How do I feel about that?_ she wondered. Fretting gradually turned into a quiet study of how he breathed and the contours of his wan, angular face in the peaceful embrace of dreams, and she found herself wanting to be near him; not just for the comfort of another living soul, but because of some inexplicable magnetism that she had been struggling against without realizing it. Absently she touched her lips with her fingertips, remembering that first kiss. Sense had been very far from her mind in that moment, but it had felt like a desire fulfilled on his part, hungry and savoring, before it turned impatient for more; dared she hope that he had similar feelings for her?

Suddenly Akksul stirred and Ryder froze, at a loss as to how to act or what to expect. Slowly blinking away the sleep, he rolled onto his back and sat up, gradually gazing around as if to make sure that everything was where he had last seen it, until his eyes fell on her beside him an unreadable expression crossed his face before he hastily looked away again. As if his gaze had been the trigger to release her from a spellbind, Ryder also sat up, pulling her clothes closer to cover herself, but abruptly Akksul’s fingers were on her wrist, preventing her from doing more than hugging the wrinkled shirt to her chest. He didn’t seem to be able to decide what to say, though some of what he thought was plain enough on his face; there was, of course, anger and resignation, but there was also a surprising amount of uncertainty and interest. Ryder waited patiently for him to arrive at some sort of conclusion. If he wanted to delay the inevitable conversation, that was fine by her, particularly because she didn’t know what she wanted to hear.

“I… dreamed of you,” Akksul said finally.

“Just now?” Ryder asked carefully. His tone was so serious, she was afraid he would retreat into himself or lash out if he mistook her tone or expression for mockery, though she was convinced he could tell her heart was racing with apprehension. Her eyes flicked down to his hand gripping her gently; maybe he really could feel it, at that.

“Then, too,” he replied, looking away and frowning. “I do not understand it.”

“Understand what?” she asked hesitantly. “Your dream?”

“It is as though you have invaded my mind, since…” he cut off, taking a deep breath. “You are so different than anyone I have ever known,” he continued.

“You mean I’m an alien,” Ryder said slowly. Well, it wasn’t as though she didn’t expect this reaction. Still, she wished he would release her wrist so she could get dressed; she wasn’t sure she could face this conversation unclothed.

“You are,” Akksul nodded. “Yet, you are _not_ like them.”

“The kett?” she asked, confused.

“Like any of your kind… or the kett,” he added judiciously.

Ryder frowned. “So I am an exception, but not the rule.” Akksul’s fingers finally released her, but she did not continue dressing; instead, she pulled her knees up and hugged them. Was he _really_ trying to justify what had happened between them with such weak reasoning? She tried to smother feelings of disappointment and focus on the work at hand; if it was the last thing she did, she _would_ change his mind about her _and_ the Initiative.

“You are… exceptional,” Akksul said a little warily, eyeing her. Perhaps he realized that she wasn’t going to let him explain it all away. Still, it was nice to hear that.

“In what way?” she asked, holding his gaze with hers.

Akksul floundered. “You… saved my life.” Ryder waited. Finally, he grimaced and continued. “You want me to say that I’ve changed my mind about everything I’ve said about your people – but some scars just go too deep, Pathfinder. Do not expect me to sing the praises of the Initiative, it is as flawed now as when I first encountered it, splintered and festering. Your people are not a culture I can embrace.”

Ryder looked away. “Yet you would lay with me?” she asked, trying not to let too much bitterness suffuse her tone. “Were you just looking for a… distraction? Forget what is to come as much as forget who and what I am, and…”

Akksul turned her face back to him with gentle fingers. “No,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I say what I mean. You are… I do not have words,” his eyes studied her face, brushing her cheek, her lips, her neck, before he lifted a lock of her hair, letting it slowly slip through his fingers. “It feels just as I imagined it,” he murmured. “Only softer.”

Blushing, Ryder tried to tear her eyes away from him, gather her wits about her, but the part of her that yearned to hear those things wouldn’t let her do it. She just trembled from his touch and felt both tears and laughter swell in the back of her throat. Somehow she _had_ managed to break through his anger, but it was all for naught; they had days, perhaps only hours, before the water would drown them and there was _nothing_ she could do to stop it. She closed her eyes to keep the few tears that had escaped her control from falling, but apparently she couldn’t quite hide the misery she felt because a moment later Akksul’s fingers pulled away.

“I have upset you,” Akksul said, startlingly concerned, yet somehow managing to sound unapologetic.

“I don’t want to die,” Ryder said softly, opening her eyes and peering towards the entrance, shivering as she imagined icy water surging through to smother them.

He grimaced. “Wanting something has never mattered,” he observed.

“With some exceptions,” Ryder glanced at him, smiling faintly – he certainly had wanted something from her with that kiss – forcing her anguish down and burying it deep. As she saw it, she had a choice about how to face death; whimpering and wallowing was not how she wanted to go out.

Akksul shrugged a little uncomfortably. “You leave a lasting impression,” he said dryly, and somewhat cryptically, but this time Ryder decided not to pursue it, not when she had a chance to really make a difference in his mind.

“What happened to you?” she asked softly. “After the Forge, I mean.”

Akksul sighed, silent for a long moment before speaking. “I was lost. I wandered into a daar and found myself unwelcome among my own people… they knew my face, knew who I was. I returned to the Moshae for a little while, but she said I was still too angry.” His eyes, filled with memories, seemed hollow as he revisited those feelings, but traces of a snarl was indication enough that the Moshae had probably been right about that. “Those people… I _protected_ those people and when I needed them, they turned their backs on me.”

“You also took many of them away…” Ryder said gently. “Some of them didn’t go home.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgement. “I did right by them. And their families. I made sure their families would want for nothing…”

“That is little comfort to someone who lost a daughter, a brother, a mother. I understand fighting the kett, but many Roekaar could have done so much more against them, instead they fought us,” she said. “They _know_ that, the Initiative came to your planets in peace and everywhere we have gone we have helped as much as we can.” She didn’t want to break the spell of his confiding mood and she was afraid that any criticism from her would make his walls go up again, but it was her honest response and that was what she stood for; if he was to hate or love her, it should be for herself, not for what he wanted to hear.

“Would _reasoning_ and parlay have kept your exiles from slaughtering angara?” he asked, hot-eyed.

“That is only really relevant on Kadara and Elaaden – not anywhere _near_ your staging grounds,” she pointed out. “Nor are the exiles a part of the Initiative anymore. It is unfair to judge all of us by their actions when we have no control over them.”

Akksul grimaced. “Because your people _lost_ control.”

“Much of our leadership was wiped out by the Scourge, nothing was as it was supposed to be. But I have been fixing things, restoring relations with our people – all the Roekaar have done is antagonized everyone.”

“The Roekaar gave their lives to protect our people,” Akksul said sharply.

“And now they are trying to kill the Moshae, and who knows who else,” Ryder retorted.

He looked away again, not replying. There really _was_ nothing to say, nothing they could do. Finally she dressed; it was clear she wasn’t going to charm her way through this conversation and she wasn’t really sure if she could have gone through with that tactic anyway. Akksul watched her, an unreadable expression on her face, but she knew regret when she saw it; it took the edge off her irritation and she settled back down close to him, though she stopped herself short of taking his hand. There was still too much tension between them for that. She left her armor off, though, seeing no point to it other than symbolically walling herself off from him completely, but she didn’t want to do that.

“Do you have any regrets?” Ryder broke the silence. She was genuinely curious, but partly she asked because stillness was the last thing she wanted to listen to in this place, especially knowing what was coming.

“Regrets?” Akksul asked.

“Something you wish you had done differently… or done, or not done at all, for that matter,” she explained.

“Do humans spend a lot of time in the past?” he asked dryly.

“How else can we learn?”

Surprisingly, he nodded in agreement. Then again, he _had_ been a scientist studying the distant past before his life as a Roekaar. “Regret… I regret that I failed the Moshae,” he said quietly.

“I gave her the best protection I could,” Ryder said consolingly, but he shook his head.

“I don’t mean that. She wanted me to change. To become who I was… I could not, cannot ever, there are too many memories… but I could have done better.”

Ryder was silent for a moment. “Do better now by honoring that wish,” she said finally.

Akksul studied her. “I regret not learning more about you.”

She smiled. “You still can.”

Wordlessly he turned her face towards him again with warm fingers and bent to kiss her, slipping his other arm around her waist to pull her closer. Ryder lost herself in his embrace, still stunned by the impossibility, the thrill of being close to him like this. A part of her was filled with sorrow that they had such short time to explore their feelings and that she couldn’t do more to heal the wounds he carried, but for the moment she was content to enjoy his affections and indulge his curiosity. There was no other word to describe his experimental kisses and touches, though he seemed to gain as much pleasure from the experience as she did. It did not last.

Intense, hot pain flashed through Ryder suddenly and she gasped, hands convulsively gripping Akksul’s shoulders, body arching away from the ground; the world seemed to darken and she was sure she was going to pass out, but instead she drifted somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, the agony keeping her anchored enough in reality to realize she was breathing hard and Akksul was keeping her from falling flat on her back to writhe on the stone. He seemed to be saying something, but when her eyes opened everything swam nauseatingly and she couldn’t reply.

_Path_ — SAM’s voice! Ryder’s heart felt like it would burst from relief and she laughed, despite feeling her every nerve was on fire. For the first time in days she was certain that they would escape and she forced herself to focus on Akksul to share the wonderful news; her laughter died abruptly as her eyes met his, looking at her with a mix of curiosity and worry. Only then did she register just how close he held her; the pain was subsiding and her mind cleared a little more with each passing second, but with clarity came painful realization.

What would happen once they rejoined the world on the surface? Ryder thought about the incredibly fragile relationship that had blossomed between them; it had been despair and a need for comfort that had driven them together, but if she had learned anything over the days they had spent trapped down there, it was that she was more than a little drawn to Akksul in a way she couldn’t imagine with anyone else. Out there, though, part of him was still very much the leader of the Roekaar – and she was the human Pathfinder. Those two identities did not mix at all, no matter what cracks webbed through his convictions. Looking at him, though, she knew that the importance of stopping whatever they had unleashed outweighed anything else, but if that wasn’t enough, her responsibilities to the Initiative – not to mention saving the Moshae’s life – were far too important to ignore. Still, a selfish part of her wished she could face herself in the morning and stay here until they died, in his embrace as she was right then.

Extracting herself from his arms, she woozily sat up facing him. “SAM is back,” she said simply, and held her breath.

Akksul’s eyes lit up immediately and he scrambled to his feet. “Can he get us out?”

“I don’t know yet, the link isn’t strong enough yet I think, but I think he will be,” she said, forcing a smile.

“We can save the Moshae!” he said, laughing in relief.

“And stop whatever it was we unleashed,” Ryder added. She hoped he didn’t see the grief building inside, spilling over the walls she tried to surround it with; he didn’t seem to realize, or perhaps care, that once they returned to the outside world they would probably be enemies again.

“Come on, let’s try the well,” he reached a hand down to her to help her up.

A little startled at the gesture, Ryder took it and stood, carefully donning her remaining clothes and armor before retrieving her weapons and the few other possessions she wanted to take with her. Not that they had much to take; most everything in the camp had been tossed after them by Zivrel to keep them alive and would only encumber them once they were in Havarl’s jungle. Akksul also dressed hastily, but she noticed that he hovered near her several times when she hadn’t been sure her knees wouldn’t buckle under her and unceremoniously deposit her on the stone floor, but other than that, he gave no indication that he was aware of the effort it took for her to just move. Finally though, there was nothing left to do but make the attempt.

Ryder followed Akksul to the controls. “SAM?” she asked, looking inward.

_Ryder, connection…_ SAM’s voice spoke in her mind again, but still fuzzy. _Attempting… secure… well now._

“Good enough for me,” Ryder said, biting her lip determinedly. Her hand went over the controls and she tried once again to feel the tech and bring it to life.

A hum spread through the floor and a brilliant blue swelled in the depths of the controls, and abruptly the whole room seemed to shudder to life. It was still a painful effort to hold the flow and keep it going, but Ryder was certain beyond a doubt that SAM was much more connected to her than when they were first trapped. She laughed in delight, her hand shaking with the effort while with her free hand she hastily wiped away tears clinging to her lashes and she looked over her shoulder to Akksul. His expression mirrored her own, almost as if he was hesitant and eager all at once.

“I don’t know how long I can hold it, be ready to jump if we need to,” she said.

He stepped close to her and gave her a nod. “I’m ready,” he said simply.

Ryder released the flow and sent them surging upwards. Light seemed to spread through the columns as if racing them, pulsing with that same frosty blue light that she now recognized as the infection, whatever it was; abruptly the lights began to sputter and die, fading back down and to her dismay, Ryder felt the energy surrounding them shudder and vanish in pockets. Looking up she could see the lip of the chasm and just as the gravity well’s power disappeared completely, she made a desperate grasp and caught the edge, grunting in pain as the force of her bodyweight strained her arm, but she didn’t waste time contemplating it. Laboring to pull herself up, she barely registered Akksul doing the same next to her, putting all her attention into what she was doing until finally she rolled over the edge and away, breathing hard and staring into a clear sky, the night breeze chilling the sweat on her face.

“We made it,” she said finally.

“We don’t have time to waste,” Akksul replied, though he, too, sounded short of breath.

“Right,” Ryder rolled onto her side painfully. “SAM? Can you hear me?”

_Yes, Pathfinder,_ SAM’s voice said, still crackling, but it was much clearer than down below.

“Good. Where is that blasted dampener?”

_Your scanner will sh_ —

“Got it,” Ryder sighed, wincing. Every time SAM tried to speak her brain seemed to throb, but she ignored it as best she could and scanned the area. When she finally found the device Zivrel had used to cut her off from SAM, she unholstered her weapon and fired an entire round of ammo into it, until the thing began to smoke and spark, making guttural noises as its system fried.

“What is that?” Akksul asked, stepping up beside her to frown down at it. “I think you destroyed it.”

“That,” Ryder said grimly, “was what kept SAM cut off from me.”

Almost instantly the change was noticeable. The pain ebbed away, leaving behind only a vague ache to remind her of the pain and she could feel subtle changes in herself that she could best describe as just feeling _right_ again. But one ache didn’t subside and it took her a moment to realize the tightness in her chest was emotion, not a physical expression of the rift between her and the AI. Her eyes met Akksul’s and she saw a change in the way he looked at her; there was uncertainty in his expression and she sensed that he had pulled back into a guarded place inside himself. Perhaps all he needed was space, but somehow she knew that wasn’t the case.

_Pathfinder,_ SAM’s voice spoke in her mind and it was truly clear for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. _There is significant trauma in your body from manipulating Remnant technology while the implant was disconnected, however there is no permanent damage. The link has been reestablished to its full extent._ Ryder closed her eyes briefly, relieved to hear it, but she didn’t feel like she would be alright.

“We need to get to the port, I have to contact my people,” Ryder said briskly.

“Where did they take the Moshae?” Akksul demanded. “We need to find her immediately, Zivrel has had _days_ to make an attempt on her life.”

“They took her to one of your daars here on Havarl,” Ryder replied, grimacing. Not ten minutes since they escaped and already he was sliding back to his cold, arrogant self. “I don’t know which, that was part of the plan in case something happened to me, so we _have to_ talk to my people first.” That was one of the few precautions they had taken that she had thought prudent considering the dodgy quality of that message she now knew had come from Zivrel.

“Lead on, then,” Akksul said impatiently, but then he hesitated, locking eyes with her. “Please – I need to save her.”

Ryder opened her mouth to reply, but finally she just nodded and turned on her heels, only pausing long enough to get her bearings. _A dream is a beautiful place, but like with every dream, eventually you must wake…_ she thought sadly, before ruthlessly shoving aside the mix of feelings churning in her heart and focusing hard on their mission.


	7. Entanglements

“You thought I was dead?” Ryder stared at the holo of Cora.

“ _I’ve never been more relieved to be wrong,_ ” her second-in-command said. “ _When SAM was severed from you completely we feared the worst. I told him to keep trying to get to you anyway, even if just to ping your implant so we could find you. We will turn the ship around immediately to extract you, just stay at Daar Pelaav._ ”

“No, no,” Ryder said hastily. “There’s no need and your mission is too important.” She tried to suppress a wince as her head pounded from the quick motion; since SAM’s reconnection everything had seemed to be set right, but the more time passed, the more Ryder realized that she still had a long way to go before she fully recovered. She closed her eyes for a long moment, trying to focus on stillness. “Wait, how come you didn’t know where I was to begin with?”

“ _That dampener apparently also scrambles more than just your link to SAM,_ ” Cora replied. “ _We were looking exactly where SAM and you were last connected but it was nowhere near any Remnant ruin like he described._ ”

“Well, that device is taken care of permanently,” Ryder said grimly.

_Pathfinder, you are in need of medical attention. I have already informed Doctor T’Perro about your condition and what needs to be done,_ SAM interjected.

“Damn it, SAM,” Ryder sighed, putting fists on hips.

_I apologize, Pathfinder. Special arrangements had to be made to treat some of your internal injuries, especially around the implant._

“ _Is everything alright?_ ” Cora asked and even though her image was transparent Ryder could see the concern in her eyes.

“Everything is fine,” Ryder said with a smile, but Cora didn’t seem to be buying it. She sighed. “I… may have overextended myself down there. I promise I will get myself checked out the moment I get back, but we both have to prioritize.” The ache in her brain was a poignant reminder that she might have to prioritize her health sooner than she would have liked, but her second didn’t need to know that, not when their mission was so important.

“ _We wouldn’t have left at all if we knew where to look for you,_ ” Cora said, not quite explaining herself to Ryder, but clearly wanting to reassure the other woman that they didn’t simply abandon her on Havarl. “ _When we received that call I spoke with Tann immediately to warn him but he wasn’t very… cooperative. He only seems to trust your word on anything and since we didn’t know how to find you or find out what happened to you… we’re the fastest ship out here, I didn’t want to risk yet another attack on Eos. We’re a tough bunch, but if a third colonization attempt failed there, I don’t think we could bounce back again._ ”

“I know, I know, it’s not a problem, Cora, you did the right thing. The Roekaar are up to something and we can’t let them get the jump on us… right now I just need to know where the Moshae was taken.”

“ _Ryder, with all due respect, if what SAM says is true…_ ” Cora began, clearly conflicted between wanting to save her and the colony at the same time, but she cut off as Ryder raised a hand to stop her.

“People may be in danger, you’re already much closer to Eos than you are to Havarl, turning back now will only give the Roekaar ample time to wipe our colony out. Besides which, what safer place could I wait in than where both Initiative and Resistance forces are protecting the Moshae?”

“ _Fair point,_ ” Cora said with a grudging sigh. “ _I will contact you as soon as we find out what’s going on in Prodromos and we’ll head straight back to get you._ ”

“That’s fine,” Ryder nodded impatiently.

“ _They took her to a place called Daar Toshaar. You might want to get a shuttle, it’s not exactly close._ ”

“Daar Toshaar,” Ryder repeated, memorizing the name. “Thank you, Cora. Good luck on your hunt.”

“ _Same to you, Pathfinder. Goddess guide you._ ” She severed the connection.

“They took her to Daar Toshaar?” Akksul asked, stepping out from the shadows to Ryder’s left. “That’s almost right beside one of our base camps… Zivrel’s base camp, unless she abandoned it for some reason,” he amended.

Ryder jumped and she stared at him. “When did you come in?”

“There’s a second door,” Akksul said wryly, nodding behind him.

“Of course there is,” Ryder sighed, massaging the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t sure she was comfortable with Akksul knowing everything that had been said, but she supposed he would have to find out sooner or later that the Roekaar were attacking human colonies; she just hoped it didn’t make him nostalgic for his days as their leader.

It was a strange situation they were in, Ryder mused, studying the man. They had been close, more so than she would ever have believed possible and if his behavior that morning was any indication, it hadn’t simply been to relieve stress in the heat of the moment, yet despite that she couldn’t definitely say that they were allies. Whatever had happened in the bowels of Havarl seemed to belong to an alternative reality almost, although there were definite lingering feelings; at least, she certainly felt a jumble of emotions whenever she looked at him, the image of kissing him coming unbidden into her mind. Maybe it was just a physical thing and she was deluding herself that there was more to it, but the uncertainty of where they stood with one another made her itch inside.

“I missed part of the conversation,” Akksul frowned and Ryder blinked, her train of thought interrupted; perhaps that was for the better, they didn’t have time for her to nurse feelings. “You were… communicating with this SAM of yours?”

“That’s nothing for you to worry about,” Ryder said stiffly. “Come on, let’s go. We should have some shuttles at our disposal here, I know it’s not a full outpost, but I can’t believe everyone wants to go on foot out here. Especially with the local wildlife.”

“No,” Akksul shook his head emphatically, stepping closer. “They would never agree to work with me and I _need_ to come with you.”

“Not everyone knows your face,” Ryder pointed out, wishing he wasn’t standing quite so close; it was very distracting. “Besides, they will listen to me, I promise. I’m their Pathfinder.”

“How long would it take to convince them? I have been your enemy for a long time, there is no reason for them to trust me. Nor should they,” he added, grimacing slightly. “Your people could never understand how important this is.”

Ryder studied him for a moment, feeling somewhere between exasperated and bemused. “You _still_ despise us, don’t you – and why wouldn’t they understand something like that? It’s _our_ forces, working _together_ with your people, who are keeping her safe as we speak!”

“I’m not changing overnight,” he frowned. “I don’t trust them to listen to you just because an angaran is in danger, even if she is revered by my people. What reason would they have to help me?”

She sighed. “I don’t know why I expected any different from you,” she muttered, folding her arms and she glared up at him, annoyed by the way his lip curling in amusement made her heart beat a little faster, those granite eyes threatening to swallow her with their intensity. She cleared her throat. “Do _you_ have a shuttle?”

“Yes,” he said, then hesitated. “But we will have to go to one of our bases. A Roekaar base.”

Ryder smiled humorlessly. “Akksul, you realize if this Roekaar base is occupied by actual Roekaar they will kill me on sight?”

“Not if I’m there,” he said.

She snorted. “I doubt they would trust you if you stopped them from hurting me at the very least. Not to mention that if Zivrel is as smart as I think she is, they’re her people now and they will do anything to stop you as well.”

Akksul grunted. “Perhaps there is truth to that. But I know of one base near here that I would be surprised if Zivrel was using, it’s near a challyrion nest that caused us a lot of trouble. We ended up only using it for emergencies because they kept coming back to the place no matter how many times we chased them off.”

“A nest, lovely,” Ryder winced. “I still think my idea is better, but…” she bit her lip. “I suppose we can try your camp first.”

Akksul smiled smugly. “There’s no time to waste.”

Ryder followed him out, already regretting going along with the plan, but she didn’t complain. Akksul had acquired a hooded rofjinn somewhere to obscure his face just enough not to be recognized and he donned it carefully, though anyone who came close would be able to identify him; anything more than that would have been suspicious, though. They casually walked out the way they had come, walking wide of everyone they saw while trying to make it appear as though that every change in direction was what they had always intended. Thankfully the daar wasn’t too large and in no time at all they were carefully making their way through Havarl’s vivid jungle. Twice they had to stop and wait for small skirmishes between the wildlife to play out before they could move on unmolested, but they couldn’t altogether avoid confrontations. By the time they had reached the border of the camp half an hour later, Ryder was feeling quite woozy from the dodging about she’d done avoiding scales and teeth from making mince out of her, but she was at full attention the moment movement ahead caught their eye.

“There’s someone there,” Akksul said in a low voice, crouching down behind a huge leaf to peer out just beyond it where a clearing offered a direct line of sight onto the camp.

“How many?” Ryder asked, imitating him. Scanning the camp revealed a small outlook with a handful of buildings behind it; on the far right from where they were she spotted their prize: three shuttles. She counted three guards on the ground and one sniper in the loft, but other than that the camp looked quiet.

“Not many, or there would be more guards,” Akksul said. “I can still go in and simply bring the shuttle to you,” he turned his gaze on her briefly to gauge her reaction and he began to stand up to do just as he said.

_Pathfinder, there may be more Roekaar in the buildings,_ SAM intoned. _However, it is unlikely that they would be helpful to our cause, those who supported Akksul have largely been reported as having abandoned the Roekaar cause._

Ryder caught his arm and pulled Akksul back down. “No! Akksul, Zivrel stuffed you down that hole to make sure that you _wouldn’t_ interfere – they might not kill you, but they _will_ capture you and there are no do-overs here.” Her grip was tight, but he seemed to be more responsive to her firm tone than anything else; she was sure he was more than strong enough to simply jerk his arm out of her grasp and do whatever he pleased, but he didn’t. She suppressed a sigh of relief at that; it would have been more than difficult to break him out on her own if he was caught, but also she still wasn’t sure she could trust that he would come back for her even if he succeeded.

Akksul let out a sigh of frustration. “I assume you have some other plan?” he didn’t quite glare at her, but it was clear that he didn’t enjoy admitting to needing her input in the slightest. Whatever had changed in him, he still was a proud man at heart.

“The challyrion nest,” Ryder said simply.

“Explain,” he tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing.

“You said they’re a constant problem for this camp. We could provoke them, have them attack the camp, draw the Roekaar’s attention away and while their occupied, we sneak over and grab a shuttle.”

Akksul shook his head. “There is no approach on that side,” he nodded to the jungle on the right.

Ryder looked out at the camp again. “We could still skirt it as far as we can and make a run for it.” Looking back at him she could see the protest forming on his lips and she spoke before he could. “It’s either that or we go in guns blazing. There’s too much risk that they will capture you and we’re still stronger together than separated.”

His lips curled slightly at the notion. “Just how do you plan on getting them to attack the camp without attacking _us_ instead?”

She chewed her lip in thought. “How good are you with a sniper rifle?”

“Good enough,” he answered.

“We set up as close to this direction as we can, fire a shot into their cave without harming them. That will send them running out and seeking out the danger to eliminate it… which points straight here, because there is nothing else around here.”

_Pathfinder, the probability of this reaction is low,_ SAM advised.

“Or I fire a shot and they scatter in all directions because it startled them,” Akksul said, sounding unconvinced; Ryder was irritated that he agreed with SAM’s assessment, but she had to admit that it was a little far-fetched.

“You can herd them with the shots,” Ryder suggested stubbornly. “Fire into the cave, then in the opposite direction to the camp.”

“You assume that they will make an intelligent choice – they’re animals, they attack what they can see and what they can’t see will only drive them into a frenzy, they won’t make the logical choice just because it’s presented to them.”

“Fine, then we rush in there and let them chase us to the camp.”

_I advise against this,_ SAM said.

“Again,” Akksul said dryly, “they would attack us because we’re the first thing they see and my men will _also_ shoot at us because we will look like we’re rushing at them.”

“Zivrel’s men,” Ryder corrected and ignored his glare. “What if we lure one of the Roekaar to do that for us?”

A speculative look crossed Akksul’s face. “That could work,” he nodded, eyeing her. “We could use the sniper tactic to lure one of them, and they _would_ follow the logical course of action.”

_The chances of this plan have a higher success rate, however it is still dubious,_ SAM said; Ryder didn’t reply, but it was the first that the AI had even hinted at a chance and she was willing to take it.

She let out a nervous breath. “Now we just have to sneak up behind the nest without being noticed, fire a shot that will lure the Roekaar through a lot of jungle and somehow get out from behind both of them and circle around to the shuttles.”

“Easy,” Akksul said, then pointedly glanced down at Ryder’s hand still on his arm then up at her face again.

Blushing, Ryder pulled her hand away and looked away. “Right, so… where is the nest?”

“Follow me,” he said and crept back from the edge of the clearing before straightening fully and heading away from the camp at an angle.

Before long they reached what looked like a series of caves and niches on the side of a small cliff; circling wide so as not to be noticed by the challyrion roaming around, they found a pathway up the hillside opposite the steep drop. The place was overrun with jungle like everywhere else on Havarl, but the closer they drew to the cliff the more Ryder could make out that it was no natural phenomenon; the surface was too smooth in places and the twilight lights filtering through the canopy to shine on the surface produced a dull glow that was indication enough of its artificial nature, though as they began their ascent she didn’t see any other indications of what stood here before earth and flora consumed it. The climb wasn’t too difficult all things considered, but Ryder was still grateful when they finally reached the top and crept the remaining few paces up. Since Akksul would take the shot, she followed his lead as he roamed along the ledge, looking for ideal vantage point. When he found one that was suitable, he set up the sniper rifle and began to seek his target. Minutes began to pass.

“What if no one comes to investigate?” Ryder asked quietly after a moment and Akksul tensed fractionally.

“They will. We train our fighters to expect the worst at all times.”

Ryder snorted softly. “I think we had the same teachers.”

Without warning the rifle suddenly fired and Akksul’s shoulders relaxed visibly, a small smile of satisfaction curling his lip, eye still to his scope to see the effect. After a moment he lifted his head and made to pack everything away, nodding to Ryder to indicate it was done. Once everything was packed, they didn’t wait to see if anyone came, instead they headed back down immediately to make use of the time it would take for their ruse to work. Ryder briefly reflected that having to try again would have been beyond her tolerance at the moment, but thankfully they heard the first snarls and howls of the nest start to rise just as they scrambled to the bottom of the hill, along with something that might have been a shout of alarm or warning.

Moving more carefully than quickly, the pair snuck back to their original position and paused long enough to see how effective their tactic had been. Seeing no one lingering around the shuttles and the sniper in the loft firing shots off in the opposite direction, Akksul and Ryder exchanged one last look before carefully heading for the shuttles. Ryder felt sweat trickle down the side of her face and her eyes seemed to vibrate from the concentration she was exerting to move as stealthily as she could while keeping a more or less constant eye on the angaran in the outlook, but just as she reached the last quarter of the distance from the clearing’s edge where they had entered a cry suddenly sounded and laser dots trembled around them on the ground; even the animal howls seemed to strengthen in force.

“Run!” Ryder yelled at Akksul and somewhere found the energy deep inside her to pick up her pace to a speed that made her fear a sudden stumble, shots hitting rocks and ground around them and practically snapping at their heels, eyes fixed on the nearest shuttle looming ahead closer and closer.

“Yes!” Akksul said in triumph as they finally reached the shuttle, slapping a hand on the controls to get the doors open. A split second after he ducked in Ryder arrived with a roll, but by then he was already reaching for the controls and in what seemed like seconds they were in the air and soaring away, although once or twice the shuttle rocked from Akksul’s hasty handling.

“We did it!” Ryder gasped, feeling stunned. She didn’t bother trying to get up, instead pushing herself to a sitting position and clutching the nearest seat as if for dear life, but her fingers were weak with the relief washing through her muscles.

“That shouldn’t have worked,” Akksul said, but he was grinning over his shoulder at her.

_Ryder, you must limit your physical exertion until your body has had a chance to recover from its ordeal,_ SAM chided in an expressionless tone, as always, though by now Ryder could make out what SAM’s version of concern was. _I am repairing what I can, but I am afraid Doctor T’Perro’s expertise will be needed._

Ryder hesitated as she glanced at Akksul, still all smiles as he steered the shuttle towards Daar Toshaar, though his eyes were focused on flying and not on her anymore. Still, she felt uncomfortable communicating with SAM in front of him all of a sudden; perhaps it was the interest he had shown in that connection. Not many people knew just how intertwined they were and it felt like exposing a weakness to an enemy, yet… how could she still consider him an enemy? Her speculation deepened, and the time for replying passed. After a while she absently pulled herself up carefully onto one of the seats, finally relaxing into cushions and an uneasy sleep gripped her.

It seemed as though she had just closed her eyes, but Ryder was forced to open them again from the shakes; blinking up sleepily she suddenly realized that the shuttle was still and Akksul was standing over her, a curious expression on his face. He didn’t seem annoyed as she might have expected, but either way she brushed him off hastily and shook her head to regain some sense of focus; little sleep or no, everything was still fuzzy enough and her body felt relaxed enough that she knew she’d slept at least a few hours. Climbing out after Akksul she blinked as dawn pearled the horizon in the distance, blinding her for a long painful moment before she could focus her eyes properly.

“We’ve reached the daar,” Akksul said, sounding uncharacteristically hesitant.

Ryder followed his eyes and gasped. A large wall closed off the largest daar she had ever seen, by all rights it would have passed for a small city on Earth. The gates looming at the center of the wall looked like it belonged on an ancient ruin, streaks of discoloration striping its pockmarked surface, vines creeping up its length and even through it in some places. She couldn’t help but stare as they drew closer, barely noticing when Akksul’s hood came up around his face again, hanging behind her a step as if she were the leader between them. She decided not to question him about it, though she thought it rather odd that a human would just stroll into a daar who happened to have an angara escort, as a clear subordinate of some sort no less, but she tried to radiate that she found this perfectly natural. Now that they were closer, she noticed a smaller gate within the gate and she headed for it; it piqued her interest, remembering datapads with pictures of ancient Earth ruins that – apart from the alien design – might have been brother to these gates.

Once they stepped inside, Ryder couldn’t help but stare at the fusion of city and encroaching nature everywhere around her; metal ramparts were so overgrown with vines that the angara traversing its length appeared to be walking on horizontal trees, and the walls were illuminated with dozens upon dozens of glowing mushrooms of all sizes. What appeared to be a center square was dominated by one enormous tree that seemed to be made up of a myriad of smaller trees, branches intertwining into a complex canopy of lush green that would shade half the square once the sun was overhead. Each step they took swirled with a sparkling mist that bathed everything in an enchanting blanket; in short, the daar was stunning.

“Hold a moment,” a voice spoke from Ryder’s side and she tore her eyes away from the towers and squares of the daar’s buildings, each seeming different from the rest and all of them sporting some manner of creeping life or another, in several hues that blended into a tapestry of colors. The man who spoke was fully armored to the point of even wearing a helmet, though he did not appear to be guarding the gates exactly as Ryder might have expected from a man with a weapon in hand. “Identify yourself,” the man spoke again.

“Pathfinder Ryder,” she said hastily, preventing herself just in time from glancing at Akksul. She wasn’t sure if she should say something about him or let the man introduce himself. “Are you with the Resistance?” she asked instead, hoping to divert his attention.

“Welcome, Pathfinder,” the man replied, surprise clear in his voice. “Yes, the Resistance answered your suggestion to guard the Moshae in a secret location. Has anything changed?” he asked cautiously.

Ryder couldn’t stop herself from giving Akksul a look of satisfaction. “No,” she said aloud. “However, we wish to speak with her, and to personally ensure that the Initiative upholds its commitment to giving her our protection as well.”

“She’s in the library,” the man gestured behind him to a circular building covered in dark red vines with purple leaves; it was close to the center tree, prominent between the squarish buildings to either of its sides. He didn’t sound all that pleased to hear about the Initiative’s involvement in this joint plan, the Moshae was beloved to them more than to her people after all, but Ryder didn’t have time to assuage his doubts.

“Thank you,” she said politely as the fighter stepped back to his post, which was apparently to lounge and radiate threat by a water fountain. Any other time she would have stopped to admire that fountain, but she could feel Akksul’s impatience on the back of her neck, so instead she gestured for him to follow and started towards the library. Before they took a dozen steps however, a woman abruptly stepped out into the street before them, surprisingly glaring at Akksul, a heavy bag slung over her shoulder.

“You! Don’t think I don’t recognize you, Roekaar scum,” the woman said, and every eye in the square went to them, a ripple of silence spreading outward.

After a long moment, Akksul stepped up beside Ryder and lowered his hood. “What of it?” he asked proudly. Immediately the Resistance fighters that peppered the crowd stood at attention, a few even training weapons on him.

“Wait, stop,” Ryder said, holding her hands out to the fighters to implore them to lower their weapons. “He’s here to help.”

“Help,” the woman spat, directing her glare onto Ryder this time. “He took my son,” the accusation in her voice cracked with pain and she took a threatening step towards them. “Now my son will never come home again because of him!”

“Your son died fighting the noblest cause,” Akksul retorted, hot-eyed as he glared right back at the woman.

“He died fighting _your_ people,” the mother said to Ryder. “Are you defending someone who would throw away my son’s life to kill your people?” Abruptly she put her burden down and opened the mouth of the sack, pulling out paripo fruits. Before anyone could protest, she smashed the fruit at Akksul’s feet. “There’s your _payment_ back you sent for my son’s life! I want _nothing_ of yours!”

Akksul opened his mouth to speak, a disturbed expression on his face, but Ryder cut in. “He’s here to help save the Moshae,” she said firmly. Her heart went out to the woman, but she couldn’t let this situation escalate; she spoke so that everyone could hear her clearly. “He is no longer a part of the Roekaar!” Akksul winced at those words, but he said nothing, eyes fixed on the broken fruit.

“That changes _nothing_ ,” the woman said, eyes burning.

“Of course it does!” Ryder said, trying to inject more conviction than pleading into her voice. “What the Roekaar stand for is division and Akksul no longer believes in that.”

“Why would a human vouch for the leader of the Roekaar?” the same fighter who had stopped them a moment ago asked, stepping forward. He wasn’t one of those aiming his weapon, but anyone with half a brain could see he was tensed and ready to leap into action if necessary.

“Because he has proven himself to me,” Ryder answered calmly. Beside her she sensed her companion stiffen slightly, but she didn’t look at him to read his expression. “He has helped me get here safely and if he would do that for me, you can believe that he is a changed man.”

The fighter nodded slowly. “Let them pass,” he called out to the rest. Perhaps he was a man of rank, though Ryder couldn’t tell. In a lower voice he added to Ryder, “He is your responsibility here. If he spreads his Roekaar poison to anyone, be sure that we will find out.”

“Thank you again,” Ryder said, keeping tight control over her voice. She grabbed Akksul’s sleeve and dragged him away from the crowd, trying to avoid eye contact with the mother standing among the broken shells of the paripo, but she only had eyes for Akksul as he passed. Thankfully the former Roekaar leader didn’t need any prodding and they made their way unmolested to the library, where Ryder shut the door hastily and leaned against it.

Akksul frowned at the ground for a long moment before he turned to Ryder. “You defended me,” he said, sounding puzzled, but also intrigued. He reached out and ran a gentle caress down her cheek with the back of a finger, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Ryder’s breath caught, but before she could muster a reply, Akksul turned away, that troubled look returning into his eyes, a blue-gray sea of turmoil; but at that moment all she could think of was the ache in her heart that was an uncomfortable surge in hope that maybe she hadn’t lied to everyone in that square about him. More importantly, perhaps their entanglement hadn’t been a fleeting dream after all; she hated how easily she was fulfilled by the idea that perhaps there was a chance of finding that surprisingly warm connection to him again, but worse was that she knew there was no turning back from those feelings now that he had unleashed them.

“Let’s find the Moshae,” Ryder said weakly, hoping she wasn’t blushing too furiously.

“You have found her,” a familiar voice preceded the woman herself, emerging from the inner chambers.


	8. The Open Box

Ryder sweated. But then, being stared at by Moshae Sjefa would make anyone feel uncomfortable, especially seeing as the angaran scientist had pressed her and Akksul for every detail they could dredge up about the Remnant structure that had been their prison, along with their experiences within, not a half hour ago. They had told the beginning of the story eagerly, hoping to impress how dangerous the Roekaar threat was and thereby convince the older woman that staying within the walls of Daar Toshaar was the best choice, but once the _inside_ stories began coming out the two of them had tripped over their tongues a little too much, cutting into each other’s words and panicking a little whenever they realized they had looked at one another meaningfully. Ryder wasn’t sure that the Moshae registered what was left unsaid, but then, she wasn’t sure she _didn’t_. The woman was hard to read.

“I am beginning to like this drink you call green tea,” the Moshae said, taking another experimental sip from the canister Ryder had offered to share earlier.

“Many don’t like it,” Ryder replied immediately, as if by rote.

“Where did you acquire it on Havarl?” she asked.

“I traded it,” Ryder answered a little wearily, reaching up across her chest to massage one of her shoulders. “When you said you wanted to talk I thought I might need to stay awake, so I asked around among the people the Nexus sent.” She could practically _feel_ the dark circles growing under her eyes.

“It has an interesting composition of flavors,” the Moshae remarked, peering into the canister to study the liquid.

“What does it taste like to an angaran?” Ryder asked curiously.

“A little like mold… and flowers.”

“Oh,” Ryder said, not sure what to say to that. “Is that… pleasant?” she asked uncertainly.

The Moshae considered. “We do not usually eat either one of those things.”

“I… rather like green tea,” Ryder replied. _Great, we’ve reached the small talk point of the conversation._

Ryder took a deep breath, wrangling with the dilemma that plagued her ever since the Moshae had requested the Pathfinder’s cooperation with her plans: to go back out into the jungle and continue her work excavating the Remnant site she had come to Havarl to see. Eyes sliding from the Moshae to Akksul sitting to her right, Ryder felt her brain actually ache harder as she considered whose side to take; the contest was between a man she had a very complicated relationship with and a woman who, she suspected, _always_ got her way. She took the next swig from the canister, taking comfort in the spreading warmth of the slightly bitter drink, all the while ignoring Akksul’s grimaces of impatience to finally make up her mind.

Grimly Ryder pondered the question, letting her eyes travel across the angaran equivalent of a library as she did. It was housed in one of the largest angaran buildings Ryder had yet seen, but it wouldn’t have been out of place going by Nexus standards. Dozens of enormous holographic data streams lit up the whole room like a glowing forest, spiraling outward from a giant planetary hologram in the center of the room. Monitors of all shapes and sizes lined the walls almost to the ceiling, recording history in the making according to the Moshae. They were seated in front of a door that lead off to one of the library’s back rooms, the one the Moshae was currently using as her quarters, and apart from a few crates blocking out the periphery, she had a clear enough view of this reservoir of angaran knowledge. As with many angaran designs she had seen so far, there was something utilitarian about the place, yet it had an unintentional ephemeral beauty about it that fascinated her.

At the moment though, Ryder found she was having trouble appreciating the view; she was far too busy wondering when this whole situation had gotten so horribly out of control. All of this _never_ would have happened if she hadn’t swooned a little not long after arriving, exhausted from the way she had been pushing herself while her body was still taxed from her time cut off from SAM. In that state Ryder had felt _much_ too pliable to refuse the Moshae anything, and information had been what the older woman had been after. Apparently she had been perfectly content to study whatever it was she was working on here; until, that was, the two of them arrived and said something that sparked the angaran scientist’s interest.

Ryder didn’t really mind passing on all that the information, it was surprisingly easy to talk to her, and none of what she could say would endanger the Initiative in any way, but she thought she couldn’t quite look at the older woman in the same way again after being flattened and squeezed by her like a sponge leaking information. At least, that’s what she felt like: an aching, bruised and itchy sponge that didn’t know how to disappoint Akksul without forfeiting ever finding out if there really was something between them.

Ryder swallowed another mouthful of tea as if to wash away her thoughts. “It could use some honey,” she muttered. Inwardly she cringed; as far as stalling tactics went, that had been a pathetic excuse. She took another, more careful, sip to cover the moment.

“We may have something similar to it. I could acquire some,” Akksul said and Ryder did choke this time, staring at him.

“In… town? I mean – in the daar?” Ryder asked, coughing and handing the canister back to the Moshae.

Akksul nodded, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “You and I could see what the market has to offer,” he suggested, the corner of his mouth curling a little in smile or sneer, she couldn’t tell.

_Go to the market together?_ Ryder thought. That couldn’t _possibly_ work as a stall for time, not pitted against a forceful personality like Moshae Sjefa’s; it was as transparent as mentioning wanting honey in her tea in the first place, she thought ruefully. Something must have changed in her expression because Akksul looked vaguely satisfied that she had clearly caught on, though apparently he failed to correctly interpret her wilted enthusiasm.

“Yes, that sounds uh, good,” she said hastily, suddenly realizing that she got so wrapped up in their conspiratorial exchange with Akksul that she had almost forgotten that the point was to escape the Moshae to talk away from her penetrating eyes. It _might_ work.

“Pathfinder,” Moshae Sjefa said calmly, putting the canister down, “if I ask the Resistance to accompany me to the site, they _will_ come, with or without your consent. Or yours, Akksul,” she shut the man down before he finished opening his mouth. “I am still asking because I am not important enough to break an alliance between our peoples, but make no mistake: I _must_ continue this work.” She took another swallow of tea, but her eyes never left Ryder’s. “I am not your prisoner, am I?”

“Of course not!” Ryder exclaimed, taken aback.

“Then give me my escort and let me go. I would like to leave within an hour if possible,” she said firmly.

“Shovaan,” Akksul pleaded. “You must remain safe. At least let me send scouts ahead to make sure there are no dangers lurking there!”

“There is no time, Akksul,” the Moshae replied, but she only flicked her eyes to him for a second; Ryder was her real objective. “What happened might change again at any moment without warning.”

Ryder wet her lips. “With all due respect Moshae, the Roekaar want to _kill_ you, not just kidnap you. Maybe you didn’t know that the kett wanted you alive at the time, but I’m sure that whatever the Roekaar will send after you will be far more dangerous than anything you’ve been threatened by before.”

The Moshae waved a dismissive hand. “We learned from that experience, but I will _not_ be hobbled by fear, especially not coming from a _Roekaar_ ,” she scoffed. She didn’t look at Akksul as she said that, but Ryder saw him tense, as if he was waiting for the Moshae to blame her predicament on him at any moment.

“Moshae, no,” Akksul leaned forward, trying to persuade her one last time to abandon the plan and let someone else go in her place.

As he spoke, Ryder took the opportunity to study him, now that there was no danger of their eyes meeting accidentally. The light from the data streams danced across Akksul’s face playfully, softening some of the contours while secretively revealing others. His eyes looked like a dirty blue sea of stars now more than ever in that light, but moments after she allowed herself to linger there she felt suddenly inspired by Akksul’s words, though she had only been listening with half an ear. _She_ was a scientist and she had SAM; if the Moshae shared the objective, maybe she could persuade the woman to stay behind like Akksul wanted and let Ryder go in her stead.

“Why exactly is it so urgent that you get there now?” Ryder asked, unintentionally interrupting Akksul as she abruptly returned to the conversation. She gave him an apologetic look, but he refused to look at her to see it, clearly offended that she cut him off.

“This site is one of several that my students and I have been studying over the years. We call them dead sites because they appear to have been deliberately shut down and in some cases taken out of commission permanently.”

“By the Jardaan you mean?” Ryder frowned.

“Yes,” the Moshae nodded. “This is the first time in all the years I have been studying these sites that one of them has come back to life… not counting your adventure,” she gave Ryder and Akksul each a significant look.

The pair of them exchanged a look of their own, this time one of concern.

Akksul was the first to break eye contact. “But we did that, we activated it,” he said.

“I suspect now that you activated more than just that one site. By itself what happened here would have been interesting, but learning that you had just recently stumbled on another and got it working, that suggests a networking that we have only seen in the monoliths before now. That also suggests something powerful is happening, on the level of activating the vaults.”

“Wait,” Ryder said. “Almost right after we triggered the activation the whole place shut down again completely, it was even deliberately flooded. That means it’s not networked any longer like the monoliths are; it’s just a signal being passed on.”

“So you said,” the Moshae agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that nothing significant happened. It could have catastrophic consequences to allow this to continue, but even were it utterly benign we need to be able to disable it if necessary, just in case, and for that we need to understand it and learn how to manipulate it. Now do you see the urgency?”

Ryder did. “You mean we might have… unleashed something and it could get a whole lot worse. But if that is so, it’s _our_ responsibility to fix it.”

“Neither of you have studied these sites nearly long enough,” the Moshae pointed out, recognizing what Ryder had been getting at. “If the situation is indeed that serious, you will need every advantage you can get, my experience included.”

Ryder, unfortunately, agreed with her as before; but she still hesitated.

“That doesn’t make the threat on your life any less important, shovaan,” Akksul insisted.

“I said I will take an escort,” the Moshae said in a no-nonsense tone. “I will have someone give regular reports on my safety if I must. I _can_ be careful. Besides, if I’m always in one place, sooner or later they will find me; so many Resistance members and Initiative soldiers is hard to miss, even for a Roekaar.”

_You’re preaching to the choir,_ Ryder thought wryly. Her own instincts told her moving around would make it harder to become a target; though, she was woman enough to admit that her position was influenced somewhat by the dread she felt at being caught off guard by Zivrel and being cut off from SAM again. Frankly, Akksul was being overprotective, but she didn’t really want to find out if he could go back to loathing her over this because she disagreed with him. _That_ was the true heart of her dilemma, embarrassing as it was. Now that she finally thought about it those terms however, she couldn’t really justify stalling any longer.

“Ryder, _please_ see sense,” Moshae Sjefa said, and Ryder’s attention refocused. The woman’s tone wasn’t at all pleading, but it did express the angaran’s exasperation with the human Pathfinder very aptly. The next time she asked it would be a threat, Ryder knew, and that would have consequences; she was out of time.

Shooting a guilty look at Akksul, Ryder compressed her lips and at long last gave the Moshae a nod of assent. “I have one condition, though: Akksul and I will come with you.”

“I hardly think that is necessary,” the Moshae said calmly.

“Necessary or not, that’s the only way I’m going to agree to this,” Ryder said emphatically. She was careful not to glance at Akksul and gave the outward appearance that the man’s reaction didn’t faze her in the slightest, but she could feel frustration rolling off him in waves.

“And if I am in danger in the future are you going to drop everything to come to my defense?” the older woman asked pointedly. “Or is it that you don’t trust your people to protect me adequately?”

“Well, no,” Ryder replied uncertainly but instantly regretted it. “I mean _yes_ , if you need it I will always come, but I didn’t mean to imply…” she trailed off, breathing a little hard. “No, my people know what they are doing. But like you said, Akksul and I have experience with this; I think you need us, not to mention SAM.”

_It could provide valuable information to compare observations,_ SAM intoned.

Akksul gave a snort of derision at mention of SAM.

“Mhmm,” Ryder mumbled under her breath, reluctantly acknowledging SAM’s input.

“The escort, they should all be angaran,” Akksul said after a moment. From the look that accompanied his statement he would see this through, for the Moshae’s sake, but he clearly blamed Ryder for caving in, just as she had feared he would. “If it is that important, we cannot trust outsiders with this. It could threaten all angara on every world and for all we know the Milky Way aliens could use this against us one day – they cannot be trusted.”

Ryder really wished he hadn’t made that argument. She would have to set herself against him, again, and she was fairly certain that their sapling bond would not survive it, if their existing disagreement hadn’t killed it already. Well, it _had_ been a crazy idea to begin with, something between her and him; she just wished thinking that didn’t amplify her loneliness. It wasn’t as if the man promised her anything, technically he was still her enemy; perhaps she had been crazy to give in to that insane urge to be with him to begin with. It was time to face reality and accept it.

“No,” Ryder said firmly, shaking her head to punctuate the word. “Out of the question. No offense Akksul, but if anyone can be bought by the Roekaar, it’s going to be angarans. Like it or not, the Initiative is your _only_ option who you can trust is not corruptible by a group of xenophobic angaran extremists.” She wasn’t sure if her words affected him or not, so Ryder just continued to look into his starry eyes steadily, silently imploring him to understand. Couldn’t he at least see that she had the Moshae’s best interests at heart? That _had_ to mean something to him…

Akksul’s mouth was a grim slash and he stared at her angrily like that for what seemed like an eternity, expression shifting almost as though he was reconciling himself to something; after a while he just seemed lost to her, searching her eyes in turn for answers. In the end, he gave a bare nod before standing and stalking away to the other side of the room without another word. Ryder let out a slow sigh of relief, but the worry in the pit of her stomach remained.

“Excellent,” the Moshae said. “It is settled then. Gather up your things, children – bring your guns.” She stood and withdrew to prepare.

Ryder stood and took a moment to compose herself before joining Akksul beside the stack of crates they had unloaded their gear onto. She reckoned that her priorities had been justified: first and foremost she had to make sure that the Moshae was protected _and_ that through her the Initiative was seen standing with its ally in her time of need. Akksul’s feelings had to take second place to that, no matter how much the thought anguished her; the both of them were just going to have to accept that. Grimacing and walking over she mused that she probably also had to accept that even if whatever it was they had been between them was doomed, for better or worse she did care about his feelings now; she just hoped he wouldn’t use that against her one day. Despite feeling a fool for it, that very fact motivated her now to try and mend things between them as she reached his side.

“Akksul,” she said, softly enough that she was sure the Moshae wouldn’t overhear, “I wasn’t trying to go against you, you know.”

Akksul turned his head to look at her expressionlessly as he strapped his harness on. “I know,” he said simply.

“So… you’re not angry?” Ryder asked, a little perplexed, but suddenly hopeful.

“I disagree with your judgement,” he replied tightly, “but I will not let her study this thing alone.”

“That’s why I insisted that you and I go along,” Ryder nodded in agreement.

“Do you think I would have been left behind otherwise?” he said contemptuously. “I may be willing to follow the Moshae through fire, but I will never let anyone or anything stop me from protecting her.”

“I know that,” Ryder replied defensively.

“I don’t need you or your favors to do that, so next time you decide to put the Moshae in more danger than she’s already in, leave me out of it. I will do what must be done.”

“I know that, too,” she said stiffly. Anger built inside her but she ruthlessly suppressed it, along with the hurt and humiliation that his words caused. “I stand behind my decisions regardless of your feelings about it, Akksul,” she continued coolly, “I’m not willing to compromise the Moshae’s life or the good relations between our people for the sake of your pride or your mistrust. Even if you feel I have somehow wronged you by not agreeing with your version of protecting her, I’m pretty damn sure she’s going to do whatever the hell she wants with or without you, so I’d rather _cooperate_ and keep her safe than alienate us from her completely.”

“I am not—” Akksul began, but Ryder shushed him by pressing her fingertips to his lips.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, letting a little heat seep into her voice. “The decision has been made, we need to focus on the mission by making sure that it goes as smoothly as humanly possible. And as angaranly possible.” She cleared her throat.

Akksul brushed her hand aside. “I don’t take orders from you,” he glared.

“And yet you are going to go along with my _suggestions_ anyway,” Ryder said emphatically, “because for success we need to have one person calling the shots. If you think my men will listen to a Roekaar, especially _you_ of all of them, then by all means, _you_ tell _me_ what to do.”

“So I’m one of them again, am I?” he demanded.

“You tell me,” Ryder shot back.

She could hear him grinding his teeth as he considered. It dawned on Ryder that this was the first time they had simply just stood this close to each other since they had escaped the Remnant building. He seemed to realize it after a moment, too, judging by the uncertainty that ghosted across his face. Abruptly he kissed her lightly on the lips before pulling away, clearly seeking to put distance between them. Ryder just stood there, stunned, stomach roiling with butterflies.

“For wanting to protect the Moshae,” Akksul explained. “However misguided your idea of protection is, I believe your intentions,” he added, then picked up his last weapon and holstered it before walking away to wait by the door.

Ryder touched fingertips to her lips before she could stop herself, then suddenly coming to her senses she hastily reached for a piece of her outer armor and began dressing. She kept her back to the door, not wanting to meet the man’s eyes and betray how thoroughly affected she felt, but she didn’t have long to sort herself out. In much too short a time she was strapping the last piece in place and after she fully armed herself, trying to take her time about it, she finally turned around to join Akksul at the door – only to find that he had gone outside already, doubtless to wait in one of the shuttles. She heaved a sigh of relief, but she couldn’t help but feel disappointed, too. Maybe the sensation of sparks between them hadn’t been mutual.

“Ready?” the Moshae’s voice made Ryder turn.

“Yes,” she replied. The pair of them left the building together. Outside the Moshae went ahead to the shuttles while Ryder approached one of the guards near the library’s exit wearing the Andromeda Initiative insignia. “Who leads your group?” she asked.

“That would be Lieutenant Sajax,” the man nodded towards a turian woman standing not far away with a larger group of Initiative people standing close to a shuttle landing pad.

“Thanks,” Ryder said and walked towards the group. That must have been the team that she had ordered assembled not long after they arrived at the library. She thought she recognized the turian from the militia headquarters. “Lieutenant,” she called out as she approached.

“Hey Ryder,” Sajax said, “I’ve assigned some of my second team to keep an eye on things here, but I’ve got all the best shots with me. We’re ready to go whenever you are.”

“Good thinking,” Ryder nodded in acknowledgement and the turian returned the gesture in thanks. “Let’s move out.”

Leaving the lieutenant to organize their people, Ryder climbed onto the first shuttle and found the Moshae already comfortably seated, along with the pilot; Akksul was nowhere in sight. She sat down slowly beside the angaran, hesitating and wondering if she should go find him, but she realized that when all was said and done any obligation between her and the former Roekaar leader had dissolved as soon as they had helped each other escape – as had their truce. If he decided to go his own way, well… she got her way regarding the Moshae, there was that.

No one else boarded their shuttle, though there was room for at least one more; she suspected that had been Akksul’s assigned seat, though she had no doubts that he was on one of the other shuttles. It only took a few more minutes for the shuttles to begin taking off one by one; for safety the Moshae’s shuttle only joined the group after two others were already in the air as an advanced guard, gliding through a low-hanging rain cloud to follow them that left beads of water streaking on the glass. Ryder watched the jungle’s hills and valleys undulate beneath them, entranced by the vibrant blues and greens bathed in the purplish-golden glow of the afternoon sunlight; after a time the Moshae finally broke the silence.

“I am surprised to see that something seems to have passed between you two,” she said simply.

“What do you mean?” Ryder asked in alarm, view forgotten.

“The last time the three of us met, all Akksul had for you were taunts… and you seem like you are struggling with him somehow, that is also new.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Ryder insisted, forcing a laugh.

“I didn’t think that anyone could get through to him after he left,” the Moshae mused. Despite herself, Ryder leaned closer curiously, waiting for the woman to continue. “I had hoped for his sake that he would seek out something or someone to heal him… I was not expecting you.”

“Believe me, we were forced together,” Ryder winced. “We had to cooperate or we would have died down there. I wouldn’t really call that a healing experience.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Moshae Sjefa said in surprise. “I meant that there is an emotional bond between you now.”

“Not really,” Ryder said faintly. This conversation was shaping up to be so much worse than the interrogation, she decided. Things between her and Akksul were complicated enough without someone else’s opinions added to the mix. “We just… helped each other, I guess we became comrades after saving each other a few times.” _Apparently it means nothing to him, though,_ she thought dejectedly. She wasn’t fooling herself into thinking that kiss meant anything more than what he said it was; the angara were much freer with their emotions that way and they had, after all, gotten close.

The Moshae gave her a look that made Ryder avert her eyes, blushing. “It may be painful, but if you can save him… I hope you will take the chance.”

Ryder cleared her throat. “Where um… where are we going exactly?” she shifted about in her seat uncomfortably.

“The silos, we call them,” the Moshae replied smoothly. “Most of it is buried by the jungle, but sections of its infrastructure are accessible with only a little digging, just recently we exposed one of them completely to study it. When we finally glimpsed what was inside we found another dead site – similar to your description, actually, very different from typical Remnant structures in some ways. This place is much closer to the surface than any other site, however.”

“Why do you call them silos?” Ryder asked warily.

“Because put together it looks like a planetary defense system network.”

“You’re not sure, though?”

“It is unlike any angaran defense system in all the important ways, but that is the most logical hypothesis I have to offer based on my observations.”

Ryder nodded. “If anyone can fix this, it’s SA—”

Something slapped against their shuttle, sending them spinning wildly through the air. After an agonizingly long and silent eternity of being unable to move from the G’s sucking her to her seat, the shuttle mercifully stabilized as the automated attitude controls kicked in just before Ryder’s vision graying out completely. She shook her head to clear the fog, but she realized that part of her disorientation was caused by the fact that her hearing was gone. She hadn’t really registered the roaring sound before her senses overloaded, but then, a lot of blood had been leaving her head for her feet at the time, that would have confused anyone.

“SAM,” she gasped, struggling to breathe normally. It was still difficult to move, they were still accelerating.

_I have managed to counteract a potential G-LOC, but I am afraid that Moshae Sjefa had no such protection,_ SAM said. _She is unconscious._

Ryder shakily turned her head to look at the Moshae; she seemed to be breathing, but she was definitely passed out. Struggling to regain motor control Ryder managed to get her hands to her seatbelt and she fumbled at the clasp to free herself. It kept slipping through her fingers but she kept trying anyway; she had to check on the Moshae, but more importantly, the shuttle was still out of control, even if the spinning had stopped.

_Repairing damage now,_ SAM intoned.

She sucked in a breath as something needled through her body, but a split second later she was blinking and her limbs were moving with a wonderful fluidity once more. Not wasting any time, she made sure the Moshae wasn’t bleeding and that nothing was seriously broken before she pulled herself towards the pilot’s seat. The shuttle was gaining altitude fast and the engines were starting to keen from the struggle against the planet’s gravity; one look was all it took to ascertain that the pilot was dead, hand still clutched on the controls.

“Please tell me you’re not going away this time, SAM,” Ryder muttered, removing the pilot’s hand to stop their ascent before taking the copilot’s seat to take control.

_I am here, Pathfinder,_ SAM replied and she felt her mind sharpen, her senses elongate and her body tense pleasantly with renewed vigor.

“How close are we to the silos?” she asked.

_We will reach the site momentarily. However, the explosion that was the source of the shockwave seems to have originated from the same location, I recommend caution._

“Oh, this is bad,” Ryder breathed, feeling very weary all of a sudden, SAM’s augmentations or no. At that moment she would have happily gone back to be trapped in the Remnant building again, with not a single worry about the future – mostly because there had _been_ no future down there. _But I do have a future to fight for now,_ she thought, and after a moment she pulled herself together with renewed determination. “SAM, take us down, but put us down a short walk away, just in case.”

_Beginning descent now._

The shuttle began to drop and Ryder felt her stomach flip, hands steady on the controls as she followed SAM’s guidance precisely. She rode a few clouds that buffeted them off course, but each time she regained control quickly and resumed their path downward. Sweat slid down her face and beaded on her chin but she didn’t waste time wiping it away; the shuttle had been damaged enough that she had to keep it in hand. At long last Ryder spotted the landing zone SAM had chosen and began a more rapid descent.

Minutes later the shuttle finally touched down with a groan accompanied by a teeth-jarring jolt and Ryder’s hands sprang away from the controls; she fell back to the seat, breathing hard, but mostly she was overwhelmed with relief at still being alive. After nearly nodding off on the spot – she really was exhausted and SAM couldn’t mask it fully – she jerked herself awake and went back to check on the Moshae again. Once she was certain that the older woman was unhurt and positioned as comfortably as possible given the circumstances, she stood and approached the airlock, but before she even took a step something caught her attention and drew her to a halt.

“Is that… gunfire I hear?” she asked.

_Affirmative,_ SAM replied.

Ryder cursed and made for the exit. A moment later she was standing on blessedly solid soil again, purple mist swirling around her ankles, but what was in front of her was a scene out of a nightmare. Screaming angarans and Initiative men and women were battling what appeared to be a swarm of RemTech bots, but unlike any she had ever seen; half of them seemed arachnid in appearance and behavior, but what truly horrified her was the sight of one of the silo doors looming in the near distance, just one, easily twice as high up and more across as the _Tempest_ , gaping open and disgorging hundreds of bots. Worse, many of those streams marched straight into the jungle instead of joining the battle at hand. She jumped as she witnessed one of the arachnids leap at an angaran from behind, one of its legs suddenly driving through the man, slicing through shields and armor with indifferent ease.

“What have we done?” Ryder gasped.


	9. Moments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: shout-out to my good friend @Walkeroflonelyroads, who prodded and helped me greatly, until I finally finished this chapter! Go read his stuff! *prod* Once he posts on AO3!

“Where is a Roekaar when you actually need one?” Ryder grumbled, chest tight and knuckles white as she gripped her gun. She coughed from the grit coating her throat the moment she opened her mouth, the air leaving an acrid taste on her tongue.

 _Based on the allocation of Initiative people it is likely that Akksul was aboard a vanguard shuttle with the Resistance,_ SAM intoned.

Ryder let out a shaky laugh that almost turned into a sob. “Not helping, SAM,” she replied. “Can you map what happened? Where each shuttle went down?” Her eyes went to the wreckage she saw in the distance near the silos; all the men and women those shuttles had been carrying were either dead or locked in combat with RemTech bots likely none of them had ever seen before.

_It will take me a moment. Please continue surveying the area to reconstruct the attack._

“I can already tell where some of the Resistance landed,” Ryder nodded in the direction of the silos, “he could be there in the thick of it. He might already be dead for all we know!”

_It is a possibility, Pathfinder. I will be able to tell more with a completed map._

Holding her weapon as steady as she could, Ryder carefully walked around the shuttle’s immediate vicinity and began her scans as SAM requested, keeping one eye on the battle nearby in case one of the bots spotted her, but she didn’t go very far; the Moshae was still in the shuttle, unconscious and helpless. Noxious fumes swirled red and blue as the jungle around the silos burned, making visibility dodgy at best, but even if it made her lungs sting Ryder was grateful for it; probably the smoke was the only thing that kept her alive at the moment. After the quick sweep, she determined the perimeter was clear and decided she could risk taking a moment to consider what to do next while SAM compiled the data she’d gathered.

 _Analyzing,_ SAM said, then fell silent.

None of the bots were close enough to see her where she had stopped, but she was sure that if this was the targeted strike she suspected, sooner or later the bots would notice not all the shuttles successfully brought down short of the silos had been destroyed; getting the Moshae out and away as quickly as possible was imperative. Only… the tightness in her chest increased as her eyes strayed to the smoldering piles of debris again littered all around the field where the bulk of the escort shuttles had gone down. A light rain began to sprinkle over them, the pleasantly cool droplets on her face making her wonder how long it would take for those fires to go out if it rained proper. After a moment she wiped water out of her eyes, hand shaking as she started to shiver; the cooler air clung to her armor, chilling it.

 _I recommend we wait here,_ SAM said finally.

“What?” Ryder asked, frowning. “SAM, I can’t protect the Moshae from _that_ , not alone,” she gestured to the battle, though she felt foolish for doing it. If Akksul saw her now, he’d probably start a derisive monologue about anthropomorphizing the AI in her head, or something to that effect. Suddenly the volume of the yells and screams of human and angara alike seemed to drop noticeably; that definitely wasn’t a good sign. “What’s to say the bots won’t sweep the area and eliminate all organics or something? Sounds like they’re doing a good job of it already,” she added grimly.

_It is likely that in the event of his survival, Akksul will forego the main battle to search for the Moshae, and this is the most likely place for the shuttle to have gone down based on the available trajectory data. In your current condition I would not advise confronting a force this powerful, waiting is preferable for the moment._

“Right,” Ryder nodded, buoyed by sudden hope bubbling in her chest. _He could find me still,_ she thought with relief. The tightness eased a little and she suddenly had to contend with tears in the back of her throat, but she managed to swallow them; SAM hadn’t promised her anything, but somehow the way the AI had phrased it, she could draw strength from it. “Right. The shuttle is useless, it might as well have been wet tissue paper against whatever it was that hit us and an intact shuttle is a target. We need to get the Moshae out and ready her for transport when Akksul gets here.” It was _when_ and not _if_ ; the former Roekaar leader was nothing if not too stubborn to die.

_I would recommend waiting only a short amount of time, however. The Resistance and Initiative engaged with the enemy will not last much longer._

“Is it safe to stay here? Do you think we’d be targets around debris?”

_Much less so than an intact shuttle. The kinetic barriers failed the moment we were hit, I do not believe it will come online again unless we repair it, but it would be time consuming._

“Then a soggy safe spot will have to do.”

Ryder closed her eyes for a moment, straining her ears and praying that the silence gradually settling over the area like an uneasy sunset meant the enemy had either moved on or her people and the Resistance had managed to disengage and retreat. Even if that were true though, the casualties were already high the moment they were shot out of the sky; the butcher’s bill was going to be hard to swallow no matter what.

“We lead them into a slaughter…” she said softly, opening her eyes again before climbing into the shuttle to retrieve the Moshae. It made her feel sick, but she could only spare a bare moment to mourn the dead; she had to focus on who she _could_ save. Moving Sjefa as gently as she could, Ryder tried to carry her out in such a way that her injuries didn’t get worse from all the tussle, but some bumps here and there were inevitable; she hoped she wasn’t making the situation worse by moving her. On her way out she clumsily extracted a blanket from one of the shuttle’s compartments, but she couldn’t quite reach the med kit with her burden.

 _There was nothing to indicate this would be the result of our actions, Pathfinder,_ SAM said.

“Those bots never saw the light of day before _we_ released them,” Ryder snapped, not willing to partake of the comfort SAM offered. “Just… don’t try to make me feel better, SAM.”

_Yes, Pathfinder._

She laid the angaran scientist on the ground hidden in a bed of mist behind a hollow carved out by bits of another shuttle and draped the blanket over the area to shelter Sjefa from the rain, but before she could retrieve the med kit to treat the angaran’s wounds, a noise made her draw her weapon, focus flooding her mind. Surely a bot would not creep up on her stealthily, they had all the advantage here, in numbers if nothing else, so it would have likely resorted to a direct attack; however, it was just as dangerous for her allies to come up on her unawares in the increasingly poor visibility, so she crouched low in front of the Moshae, shielded by the earth bank dug up during the crash and waited quietly.

Another snap.

Slowly counting the seconds in her head as no one and nothing emerged from the thickening smoke, Ryder finally took a steadying breath, slowly getting up from her crouch before moving towards where the noise had come from. The light sprinkle turned into a steady downpour that battled the flames around the field, smoke roiling in response like coiled serpents lashing out in anger at the sky. It stung her eyes a little and the air burned in her lungs, each painful breath misted before her and her hands trembled from the cold, every exposed part of her soaking, but she ignored her discomfort. After walking the perimeter one more time, she began to relax, heading back to the Moshae’s side. It must have been an animal, frightened away by something in the increasingly inhospitable field.

Without warning, a figure emerged directly in front of her and her gun was up and aimed in seconds, but she let her arms drop again almost immediately: Akksul was there, blue blood smeared across his face and chest, expression grim, though in his eyes Ryder saw the same surprise she herself felt; he must not have expected to stumble across her and the Moshae so quickly, or at least not in this particular spot.

“Akksul,” Ryder gasped with relief, barely stopping herself from rushing up to him. Instead she looked him up and down, looking for injuries to account for all the blood on him, but it must not have all been his; there wasn’t a visible wound on him anywhere apart from a small gash across his brow, but that certainly wasn’t large or deep enough to account for it all.

“The Moshae?” the former Roekaar leader asked in a tight voice.

“Alive but injured,” Ryder replied, looking over her shoulder to where the angaran scientist lay. “I haven’t had a chance to do more than bring her out of the shuttle, in case the bots would target .”

Akksul growled deep in his throat as he approached the unconscious woman and touched the blood on her, and Ryder, suddenly wary of him, kept her distance. There was no telling how he would react to his mentor’s injury sustained in her company, and she wasn’t at all confident that he would stay his hand from harming her if he thought her somehow responsible. It was idiotic, just looking around clearly showed that something – someone – else was responsible for their crash, but she would never accuse Akksul of being overly rational that way, not with his history. Her heart went out to him as she thought it, though; he had gone through so much, and no matter how confident he was now she knew that inside he was still broken. It was why he was unstable in the first place, why he had turned xenophobic – and who could blame him really? She didn’t forgive him for what he had done, but she understood and sympathized with the wounded soul inside him.

“When I get my hands on her,” Akksul said venomously, straightening and looking around the devastated field; theirs wasn’t the only ship to scar the soil with deep gouges, leaving all manner of flora flattened and smoldering in its wake. “All this for what? To make _me_ become a better leader? Why they even bother with the fiction that they’re after the Moshae for my sake, I don’t know, but this,” he nodded at the wrecked shuttle, “this would never have happened if they hadn’t locked us down there. Did they think I would just sit still? After threatening the _Moshae_?” ****

Ryder almost swallowed her tongue in surprise. For once in his life, the man blamed the _real_ enemy instead of the entirety of all aliens. She narrowed her eyes as she studied him surreptitiously; was it possible that she’d actually made an impression on him, changed his mind about more than just herself? Or was he struggling to change his attitude _because_ of her? Either way, she wasn’t about to put this newfound understanding between them to the test by diving into the subject of Zivrel and her role in the death and destruction cascading all around them; she decided keeping the ball rolling was the right play here.

“We need to get the Moshae to safety, Akksul,” she said. “Did anyone come with you? Is your shuttle intact?” she asked, not really believing either thing possible, but hoping all the same.

Akksul shook his head. “The Resistance engaged the enemy; I volunteered to find the Moshae. My shuttle, along with our pilot, is in pieces.”

“Of course they did… and of course you did,” Ryder sighed.

“Don’t forget ‘of course it is’,” Akksul continued the thought, surprisingly wry for the solemnity of the moment.

“Funny,” Ryder smiled slightly, but her flicker of good humor was quick in passing. The problem was, moving was increasingly urgent and the jungle was definitely not much safer than lingering here in a field of wreckage. A stretcher would have been a nice idea, but with only the two of them, they would be defenseless for precious moments while one of them dropped the handles and reached for a weapon; after meeting some of the native species in this fluorescent jungle, she didn’t want to chance being out there without one of them going guns ready.

“I wanted to find you as well, though I did not say it,” Akksul said abruptly. Ryder opened her mouth, perplexed, but he continued before she could utter a sound. “Don’t think too much on it.”

Ryder compressed her lips, but she did not pursue it. “Help me with her, I’ll cover you,” she said instead, approaching the Moshae, while trying not to sound like she felt, which at the moment was infuriated, confused and alone. Perhaps his intention had been to reassure her that she was important, too, but then he had to invalidate it like it meant nothing; was he toying with her?

Akksul frowned. “I know this terrain better than you, I should be the one guarding.”

Perhaps ‘understanding’ was too strong a word to apply to their changed relationship, Ryder thought bitterly. More like they were still temporary allies in a forced partnership; the more time passed the more she did not like it. After this whole episode ended and they reached the daar perhaps she would let Akksul take over and go find her people by herself. She very much wanted to go home to a place where she was in control; she would have access to resources and hot showers alike, Lexi would fix her up under SAM’s guidance and then the Roekaar would truly feel the honored distinction of being in the crosshairs of the human Pathfinding Team.

For the moment though, her reality was that she was still cold, miserable and destined for possibly hours’ worth of relentless arguments with Akksul unless one of them relented to the other. Ryder gritted her teeth, returning her eyes to the Moshae helplessly. Now that she was so close, Ryder noticed Sjefa’s tunic had shifted from all the movement earlier to reveal several bloodstains that seemed worse now than before in the shuttle. Biting her lip, she thought through the situation and finally came to a decision.

“Fine!” she said to Akksul, looking anywhere but at the man. “But I don’t think we should move her before treating that wound,” she nodded to Sjefa’s left side, where her tunic was dampest from blood. When Akksul didn’t move, she glared back up at him. “That was an invitation to help me,” she said pointedly.

Thankfully, Akksul didn’t need telling twice; in fact, he quietly handed her everything she asked for as she tended the Moshae’s wounds. Glancing around, risk calculations started whirring in the back of her mind and by the time she was done with the wound, she decided they were safe enough for the moment to check for any other serious wounds and treat them. She could feel Akksul’s disapproval at her slowness as she began feeling for broken bones, but to her relief she didn’t have to delay them any longer – the Moshae was in as good a condition as could be expected, considering that she still hadn’t regained consciousness. That worried her, but she didn’t dawdle in scrambling to her feet, lifting the angaran scientist over her shoulder with Akksul’s help.

“Make sure you follow my footsteps exactly,” Akksul said, hurriedly stuffing the medical equipment they had unpacked into a startling amount of pockets he had on his person – including her gelpacks. She decided to let it slide for the time being.

Ryder clenched her jaw. “I’ll try,” she said in a tight voice, then firmly started off without him.

Muttering, the former Roekaar leader caught up with her quickly and took the lead, but not before giving her a flat look. There was a hint of dryness about him, though; Ryder rather thought that she was finally rubbing off on him. Or at least, he knew her well enough by now to know that arguing with her would only end with him having to admit – at least to himself – that he was wrong; clearly the man learned from stepping in that particular pit several times now with her.

 

It didn’t take long for the Pathfinder’s and the former Roekaar leader’s quiet cooperation to begin to fray, unfortunately; it was hard to keep in step with the angaran while staggering under the Moshae’s weight after they had been walking – and dodging carnivorous beasts every other minute it seemed like – for over an hour, if Ryder judged the passage of time correctly; it was hard to tell from the ground. The sounds of the tail end of the battle were long faded behind them, and the only evidence that there was something amiss in the jungle were the plumes of smoke rising off in the distance and the occasional distant cry; and they only even glimpsed that the few times they reached a break in the dazzling deep blueish-purple canopy.

Craning her head skyward, she glimpsed a dirty silver stream again, much smaller against the yawing stars than the last time she’d seen one. “Alright,” Ryder gasped, unsteadily approaching a giant glowing mushroom before slinging the Moshe down as gently as she could to lean against it, the older woman’s chin falling to her chest limply. “That’s far enough, we’re stopping now.” Before Akksul could even growl in protest, she sank the rest of the way to the ground beside the Moshae, then rolled on her back, groaning.

“Those are poisonous!” Akksul exclaimed, rushing over and pulling the Moshae away.

“Not sure I care,” Ryder said hoarsely, gripping her ribs in agony. She felt oddly compressed after jumping around with someone on her shoulder, but already she felt better, feeling the relaxation of being free of her burden run numbly over her, making her feel drowsy.

“You could have killed her,” the irritating man grumbled, a voice that strangely lulled her in that moment; it didn’t matter what he was saying, so long as he was saying something. She let the sounds of the jungle wash over her, the strange calls of wild animals native to this strange place out of a fantasy, the feel of the gentle evening breeze on her cheeks, rustling her hair...

Surprising, cool fingers found hers as her arm was lifted around Akksul’s shoulders and that jolted her awake well enough. She gasped when he suddenly pulled her up, then helped her a few feet away, before setting her down, a little unceremoniously, beside where he’d already lain the Moshae in the hollow of a giant tree that looked like dripped wax, all melted together with holes in between.

“Thanks,” she muttered, remaining sitting up as best she could to keep from falling asleep. The ground seemed so invitingly soft at that moment that she wondered at how she had never observed that before about it, but in the back of her mind she knew it was her body screaming for rest and fooling her mind into thinking anything was comfortable enough for a little sleep right then.

“You could have killed yourself, too,” Akksul said hesitantly, trying to inject severity into his voice but not entirely succeeding in the venture. He _was_ going soft on her!

Ryder smiled wryly. “You’re just used to helping me now,” she said.

Akksul snorted, but didn’t deny it; and then, a silence began to settle between them – an uncomfortable one. Ryder’s eyes slid to the Moshae, feeling hesitant to speak in front of the woman about what she really wanted to find out, even though the woman was clearly unconscious. A glance at Akksul told her that he was just as uncomfortable with the idea.

“So,” Ryder said after a long moment, finally unable to bear the unspoken questions any longer. “You said…” she tried to make herself continue, but she quickly gave up and just hoped he would infer what she was asking.

A muscle twitched in Akksul’s jaw. “So,” he repeated slowly, looking a little unsure, clearly as if he didn’t know what she was getting at and just as clearly determined to wait her out, judging by his expression.

Ryder sighed in frustration. “Well, you’re not much of a conversationalist,” she forced out a laugh.

“And you are good at deflecting your inability to speak to me,” Akksul pointed out.

“I wasn’t!” Ryder exclaimed, laughter vanishing. She rather felt like she’d just been goosed of all things, but _surely_ he wasn’t right. Was he? “How..?” she furrowed her eyebrows in confusion, but anger quickly replaced it. “Oh, so suddenly you pay attention and have mapped the human psyche? You think I’m evading?” she scoffed. “You’re one to talk.”

“You’re doing it again,” he said simply, smirking.

Ryder glared. “Well I don’t see _you_ bringing up anything without prodding,” she snapped.

“I will carry the Moshae from now on, but we must move.” He got up and she copied him with some difficulty.

“That’s it?” Ryder frowned at him. “We’re not talking?”

“You may talk if you wish,” Akksul replied with a nonchalant shrug.

“Now who’s changing the subject and evading?” she crossed her arms. Instead of arguing like she expected however, the infuriating man clearly began to politely wait for her to do all the talking. It wasn’t fair, she decided. Of all the times to start being an attentive listener like she had wished so many times, it had to be _now_? She sighed wearily. “Fine, just… let’s rest for a few more minutes.”

Abruptly he stepped closer before she could move to sit by the Moshae again, gazing down at her seriously and letting an entirely unexpected worry show in his expression. Ryder realized she must have looked beat; she _felt_ pretty used up. Perhaps she should ignore her aching body and just push through, but just the thought of fighting their way through the jungle the rest of the way to the daar made her want to curl up and fall asleep, even if she wasn’t the one carrying Sjefa the rest of the way. Trying to reassure Akksul that she was fine, she gave him a small smile and started to turn away, but he caught her arm, pulling her back and even closer than she had been before; his eyes were on her lips, and suddenly she felt it – the kiss that had not yet happened, but that he was definitely thinking about. She swooned a little closer, unable to stop herself even had she wanted to, surprised at how ready she was to give herself over to whatever it was sparking between them. She reached up to touch his face, but hesitated.

“Neither one of you… knows how to talk... about feelings,” the Moshae said weakly into the moment, startling both of them. They jumped apart, though on his part Ryder thought Akksul was not nearly as embarrassed as she was; by his expression, he was merely happy to see Sjefa awake again.

“Shovaan!” Akksul exclaimed, going to her and taking her hand. “Are you alright? Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere,” Sjefa replied, using Akksul’s arm to sit herself up despite his grunt of protest. “But I will live, I think.”

“Professor, you hit your head pretty hard, it would be best if you stayed lying down,” Ryder said, going to the angaran scientist’s other side to crouch beside her.

“Nonsense,” the Moshae shook her head, though a wince of pain gave her the lie. “Where are we?” she looked around at the jungle, blinking a little groggily as she fully regained consciousness.

Ryder’s eyes caught Akksul’s and she felt herself react involuntarily, nostrils flaring as her heartbeat quickened, but she quickly broke eye contact. That seemed to fix the problem of the unbidden, shockingly salacious thoughts that the former Roekaar leader evoked in her in that moment – for the time being, at least. She couldn’t do anything about her suddenly burning face, though. _Why_ did he have to addle her senses just when the Moshae woke up? She needed to keep her wits about her around the angaran scientist and thinking about Akksul’s warm, electric touch or the hunger in his eyes – just like they had been on the night they had spent together – was _not_ helping. She almost groaned, realizing that she was thinking about what almost happened anyway; getting lost in the details, in fact. She cleared her throat.

“We were attacked,” she said calmly. “Whatever we unleashed, it’s… it’s far worse than we feared. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bots were pouring out of the silos when I last saw them, killing our people who were shot down closer to doors than we were.”

“ _From_ the silos – from the _inside_?” Sjefa asked, startled. “Are you sure?”

“It’s a little hard to miss,” Ryder said wryly, but her momentary humor evaporated instantly as she recalled what she had witnessed.

“I must see it,” the angaran woman said firmly.

“Moshae, I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” Ryder replied a little reluctantly. She didn’t want to be put in a position, again, where she got on Sjefa’s bad side, but this whole expedition had been a terrible idea to start with; continuing on despite everything going wrong already seemed like an even worse idea. “If we go anywhere near those things the only thing that will remain of us are stains to be trampled into fertilizer underfoot to that horde.”

“You said they were emptying out – that will eventually stop, if it hasn’t already,” the Moshae insisted.

Akksul buried his face in one of his large hands. “You have been seriously injured, Shovaan,” he said pleadingly.

“You will help me if I need it I imagine,” she looked around herself as if looking for something. “I still have perfectly good legs that can walk.”

“It’s a war zone back there!” Ryder tried again.

“Pathfinder,” Sjefa pinned her down with a sharp, clear stare. “Enough excuses. From both of you,” she added, glancing at Akksul. “I always knew there would be danger, one does not study the Remnant without expecting the worst – I may be old compared to you, but I am not as frail as you seem to think.”

“We just went to all the trouble of carrying you _away_ from there,” Ryder said weakly. Just remembering the experience made her muscles bunch up painfully; the woman wasn’t exactly easy to balance on her shoulders while avoiding having her ankles bitten off.

The Moshae didn’t even deign to reply to such a pathetic argument, she merely gave her a flat look, and Ryder couldn’t really blame her for it. She had been unconscious at the time, and therefore unable to make her wishes clear; though truthfully, the thought had likely crossed both their minds that she would have wanted to stay, _they_ had wanted her spirited away back behind the safety of Daar Toshaar’s impressive walls. Akksul looked away for a long moment, evidently contemplating.

“The both of you have turned insufferable since this foolishness with the Roekaar,” Sjefa broke the silence. “Before this neither one of you treated me like an invalid. So what has changed?”

Akksul looked troubled by her words. “It is different now,” he said finally.

“How?” Sjefa demanded.

He shrugged uncomfortably, eyes fixing on the ground in shame. “I created them, Moshae… and now they are coming for you. It would break me if something happened to you because of what I have done.”

“You’re already broken, Akksul,” the Moshae said gently. “Do not let that guide you. You’ve learned better than that by now.”

Finally he nodded, shoulders relaxing visibly. “You are right, Shovaan. I will double back and make sure the bots are gone. If I’m not back by dusk, do not follow.” Without another word or even a _glance_ in Ryder’s direction to get her input, he left.

“As to you,” the Moshae said once Akksul’s light footsteps faded away, piercing gaze once more on Ryder, “why do you feel it your personal responsibility to take care of me?”

Ryder felt like squirming, but she schooled herself to stillness. “I would take care of anyone injured under my command – not to say I have authority over you,” she amended hastily at the dangerous flashing in the Moshae’s eyes, “I mean to say, I try to look out for people on my team.” That wasn’t much better, but at least she didn’t feel like the angaran was going to skewer her with her gaze any longer.

“You do it for him,” Sjefa said speculatively after a moment. “I wonder what he would say to that?”

“No,” Ryder spluttered, mortified. “No! I act on my conscience alone, I do not pander to others like that.”

“I never said you did that,” the angaran scientist replied. “I do not blame you for trying to connect with him through me, but you should know that there are far deeper things in his heart where I have no place, I am no key to him. I know I told you earlier to help him if you can, but you must be careful not to lose yourself in the process – be wary when exploring those depths, they are treacherous, even if he is not, at least not intentionally.”

Ryder let out an incredulous laugh. “There isn’t anything I could say to the contrary that will convince you I’m not interested, is there?”

“Do not insult my intelligence,” Sjefa said sternly. “He is like a son to me – I know when someone holds his heart.”

Ryder stared, not sure how to respond to that. _Holds his heart?_ she wondered inwardly, then felt something inside her loosen in defeat, eliciting a long sigh. “I… don’t know what to make of the situation,” she said despondently. “One minute he’s my enemy to the death, the next I find myself in his arms, and ever since then I haven’t been able to make sense of anything at all. I don’t know what _I_ feel, let alone what _he_ feels – I don’t even know if he’s still my enemy or not sometimes!”

The Moshae smiled, rather smugly. “He’s not your enemy anymore, I should think. I had no idea things had gone that far!” The delight in her voice made Ryder blush furiously; she hadn’t intended to be so forward about it, but she realized she desperately wanted to talk about the whole relationship with someone who understood Akksul. The Moshae didn’t have to sound so pleased about it, though, as if Ryder was a much groomed child who recited her lesson perfectly. “He has many flaws,” Sjefa continued, “but disloyalty is not one of them. If he managed to see past the fact that you are human and if he bonded to you, he will consider you in that light from now on.”

Ryder snorted. “He sure has a funny way of showing it sometimes.”

She remembered again the almost kiss that had passed between them earlier; maybe the Moshae was right, maybe he did see themselves as being… what? They had been in a hopeless situation, locked together and desperate; it hadn’t exactly been a romantic moment of realization that they felt something toward one another. Now that she thought about it though, he _had_ been acting differently around her, though; as if he struggled as much with where to place her in his life as she struggled with him. Could he think that now they were in a relationship? What even constituted an angaran relationship? She felt like her head was going to explode from the burning questions dodging around her mind like mad pinballs.

“What do you suggest I do?” Ryder asked finally.

“Be patient,” Sjefa replied. “These things tend to work themselves out.”

Ryder nodded. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she also happened to agree.

A comfortable silence settled between them, the Moshae settling back into the hollow to rest while Ryder stood and walked around, weapon ready, making sure nothing snuck up on them while they waited, but she stopped frequently to watch the angaran breathe. The medigel was doing its work on Sjefa’s wounds, but Ryder still wasn’t sure whether the blow to her head had been bad enough to warrant concern. The tightness around the scientist’s eyes indicated that at the very least she had a headache, but she had seemed alert during their conversation and her words hadn’t been slurred, so perhaps she had been spared a serious concussion. Or maybe angaran physiology was different that way; she would have to ask Akksul about it privately and figure out how to treat someone who was so adamantly opposed to doing anything that hindered her work.

 

When Akksul finally returned in what seemed like an eternity later, Ryder glanced at the sky, noting that he had cut it fairly close; the light was fading fast, entering the twilight hour. Looking over her shoulder at where the Moshae was resting, it was obvious she had fallen asleep; that afforded them a moment to themselves, but disappointingly Akksul merely looked vaguely uncomfortable as he approached her, finally just giving her a nod that the coast was clear before going to Sjefa’s side to wake her. Ryder holstered her weapon and with a sigh approached the two angarans. Undoubtedly Akksul would insist on taking point again and she would have to assist the Moshae; but when the angaran woman stood, she waved Ryder’s help away, so instead she took rear guard.

“SAM, can you detect the bots?” Ryder asked quietly, ignoring the disapproving frown Akksul shot her over his shoulder.

 _Not directly, but I may be able to track them if you interface with a Remnant terminal at the silos. There may be information on their destination and purpose recorded there,_ SAM replied.

“Right, well, lucky for you that’s exactly where we’re going.”

The three of them made their way back slowly and cautiously, listening and watching for any indications that bots were nearby, but nothing stirred – nothing at all, not even the usual wildlife roaming the jungle. That made Ryder nervous; when the animals went silent, danger was always close behind. As they drew closer they finally did hear something: distant screams, roughly from the direction the bots had entered the jungle, which gave Ryder a rough idea of their movements at least, but she still wished SAM could detect their immediate presence so she could make absolutely sure they weren’t being tracked. She would not like to meet one of those arachnid bots in the increasingly dark jungle armed with weapons that evidently weren’t effective enough against them; the battle from earlier in the day was indication enough of that.

“The silo doors are closed again,” Ryder remarked as they finally entered the field where their shuttles had been shot down, squinting at the massive structures. The smoke had dissipated by now, but the smell of ash and burning synthetic materials were still thick in the air, with hints of the sickening, sweetish smell of burning flesh that made her want to gag.

“Yes, they were already closed when I came,” Akksul said.

Ryder gave him a flat look. “You didn’t think to mention that?” she asked dryly. “That’s a pretty significant change.”

“You would have seen it sooner or later,” he replied in much the same tone.

“Come, children, no more bickering,” Sjefa said before Ryder even opened her mouth to reply.

By the time they reached the silos and climbed up the massive roots seemingly swallowing the structure to where the angaran scientists had previously opened what looked like a maintenance entrance on the rim of the giant doors, the jungle was bathed in a blanket comforting shadows that hid the scars left by the battle that had raged there hours ago, the luminescence of the plants dappling the landscape like a sea of fairies. From as high up as they were, Ryder thought she could have made out the closest daar had there been more light, although the jungle likely still obscured much of what the angarans had built. Even though Havarl was healing again since her team had landed here, the jungle had had a lot of time to grow right over everything, against all attempts to hold the diseased flora and fauna at bay.

“Any sign of activity?” Ryder called out softly to Akksul, who had entered first to make sure nothing was lurking in wait.

A long moment passed.

“Nothing,” he finally called out, and without waiting the Moshae immediately stepped in after him.

The first thing Ryder noticed was the frosty blue snaking along the walls and the architecture of the place: again, there was something rigid about the way the hallway they entered bended, as if someone had painstakingly measured every degree of every block to make sure that it was a perfect zig-zag. It wasn’t exactly unexpected, Ryder had been in Remnant sites that were unlike any others she had seen and she thought it foolish to assume that the Jardaan were a single body without any differences or even cultures, maybe even species; after all, humanity itself was far from homogenous and every age they lived and built things produced designs and styles that varied greatly from that of the previous eras. There was something very different about the dead sites, though, she was increasingly certain of it; she wasn’t sure she could put her finger on it exactly, but there _was_ a difference.

Akksul noticed, too; he gave her a meaningfully grim stare before moving deeper inside. The Moshae took the lead after a few steps to guide them to where her team had been researching the site, which she explained was the closest room to where she approximated the doors to be, though there were no windows or exits to indicate that anything was beyond that point except for what their own eyes saw from the outside. Ryder expected more of the same oddness once they reached it, but instead what greeted her was a room almost exactly like the one Akksul and she had visited before the flooding began, with a single green-lit pillar pulsing in the center; the only difference was, this one wasn’t broken and it wasn’t blocking anything. Instead, she saw the floor had been designed to cut away around it and the pillar went down a very long way.

“The symbols,” Akksul said, reaching out a hand to the pillar but stopping short of touching it. Touching unfamiliar RemTech in dead sites was something they had both learned to be extra cautious about.

“Are they the same?” Ryder asked.

 _Analyzing,_ SAM answered.

“I think so,” Akksul said.

_Ryder, I believe I have part of the puzzle._

“What?” Ryder demanded, holding up a hand to Akksul when he opened his mouth in confusion. He understood suddenly that she was conversing with SAM and snorted softly, shaking his head.

_Based on the similarities to angaran languages and Remnant data you have gathered, these inscriptions might translate as ‘mother of vengeance’, or perhaps ‘return’ may be a closer word._

“It says ‘mother of vengeance’ of all things,” Ryder repeated in bemusement to her companions.

“You can interpret this dialect?” the Moshae asked, brow lifting in surprise and perhaps a hint of respect.

“It’s that thing in her head, not her,” Akksul said before Ryder could respond.

“Either way,” Ryder gritted her teeth, “I think it means we are all in a lot more trouble than we thought before.”

“Extraordinary,” the Moshae said, studying the room.


End file.
